Home › Vegetables › New Potatoes
New Potatoes
Soak them one hour in cold water; then rub off the skin with a coarse cloth, put them on the fire to boil, and when tender remove from the fire and drain well. Then add to the potatoes enough milk nearly to cover them, and heat it to boiling. When the milk is hot, stir in one tablespoon of butter rubbed to a cream with one tablespoon of flour. Stir well to prevent the potatoes sticking to the stewpan, being careful not to break them; add salt and pepper, and more butter if desired. Serve hot in a deep dish.
A creamed new-potato dish from the era when the first small potatoes of the season were treated as an event. The method is sound; only the skinning and the sauce thickening need comment.
- The hour-long soakSoaking loosens the papery skin of genuinely new potatoes so it rubs away under a rough cloth. Supermarket "new" potatoes are often older stock with tougher skin, in which case a stiff brush and a thin scrape are quicker, or leave the skins on.
- QuantityThe original gives no amount, and specifies only milk enough nearly to cover the potatoes, so the quantity follows from the pan. Two pounds of small potatoes serves four; one tablespoon each of butter and flour will thicken that much milk only lightly.
- BoilingStart the potatoes in cold water and bring up to a simmer; 12-18 minutes depending on size. A hard rolling boil knocks them about, and the whole point here is keeping them whole.
- The beurre maniéButter rubbed to a cream with flour is a raw paste stirred into hot liquid to thicken it. Add it in small pinches and let the milk bubble a minute or two afterwards, or the sauce tastes of raw flour.
- Milk that will not curdleHeat the milk gently with the drained potatoes rather than pouring cold milk onto a hot pan. Whole milk holds together better than skim; scalded, over-boiled milk will separate around salty potatoes.
- Stirring without breakingShake the pan by the handle or use a flat wooden spatula under the potatoes rather than a spoon through them. The instruction not to break them is the hinge of the dish.
- SeasoningSalt after the sauce has thickened; the milk concentrates as it reduces. White pepper keeps the look clean if that matters to you. Chopped parsley or chives is a period-appropriate addition.
Creamed new potatoes belong to the short late-spring window when the first thin-skinned potatoes came out of the ground, small and waxy and too delicate to keep. Butterick's cook book, published by the pattern company for a broad household readership in the early twentieth century, is full of this kind of plain American cooking built on butter, flour and milk. The technique itself is older and French in origin. The insistence on rubbing rather than paring the skin is a reminder that a genuinely new potato has almost no skin to speak of.