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Creamed New Potatoes
Small new potatoes are delicious when served with a cream sauce. For two dozen small potatoes allow one and one-half pint of milk; one tablespoon of butter; one and one-half tablespoon of cornstarch; one teaspoon of salt. Moisten the cornstarch in a one-half cup of the milk, place the rest of the milk on the fire and when scalding hot add the cornstarch mixture. Cook until again scalding, set on the back of the fire and add the butter and salt. Have the potatoes peeled perfectly with no speck of the thin skin to be seen, boiled until tender and drained. Place these in the serving dish, pour over them the sauce, dust with a sprinkling of pepper, and serve at once. This makes a particularly nice dish for luncheon.
A plain milk sauce thickened with cornstarch rather than a flour roux, which is why it stays glossy and pale. The whole dish depends on getting the sauce to the right thickness before it meets the potatoes.
- Measures in cupsOne and one-half pint is 3 cups of milk; half a cup of that is taken out to slake the cornstarch. Two dozen small new potatoes is roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb.
- "Scalding hot"Milk at scalding point is about 180F — steam rising, small bubbles at the edge, no rolling boil. Cornstarch needs to come up close to the boil to thicken fully and lose its raw taste, which is what the recipe's second scalding does.
- "The back of the fire"On a coal range the back of the stovetop was the cool zone. Move the pan off the burner entirely, or to the lowest setting, before stirring in the butter so it emulsifies rather than separates.
- Sauce consistencyOne and a half tablespoons cornstarch to 3 cups milk gives a deliberately thin, pourable sauce that coats but does not cling. If you want it heavier, go to 2 1/2 tablespoons; more than that and it turns pasty as it cools on the potatoes.
- ButterA single tablespoon in 3 cups of milk is modest by current taste. Two to three tablespoons, whisked in off the heat, gives a richer sauce if you want one.
- The peeling instructionThe insistence on "no speck of the thin skin" is aesthetic — dark flecks show badly in a white sauce. New potato skin slips off easily if you rub it with a coarse cloth or the back of a knife before boiling.
- BoilingStart the peeled potatoes in salted water and simmer 12 to 18 minutes depending on size, until a skewer meets no resistance. Drain and let them steam dry a moment; wet potatoes thin the sauce.
- YieldServes four to six as a side, which matches the luncheon use the book has in mind. Assemble at the last minute — cornstarch sauce skins over quickly and the potatoes go grey-edged if held.
The Butterick book belongs to the era when a "cream sauce" was a fixture of the American home table, taught as a formula to be varied endlessly — over potatoes, peas, onions, dried beef, hard eggs. What marks this version is the cornstarch: by the early 1900s cornstarch was cheap, boxed and heavily advertised, and it gave a glossier sauce than a butter-and-flour roux, which suited a dish whose whole appeal was pallor and gloss. New potatoes were strictly seasonal, dug small in early summer before the skins set, and recipes of the period treat them as a brief luxury rather than a staple. The note that this makes "a particularly nice dish for luncheon" places it in a household with a lighter midday meal, a structure the Butterick company, being in the business of dress patterns and women's magazines, addressed constantly.