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Potato Drops
To one pound of mashed potato add two wellbeaten eggs. After all is well mixed, the preparation is dropped by the spoonful into plenty of boiling fat and fried until a golden brown, then carefully drained on soft paper and served with a garnish of parsley. Each spoonful is made to retain the shape of the spoon by dipping the spoon in boiling water after every using.
A two-ingredient fritter that depends entirely on the potato being dry and stiff enough to hold together in the fat. The original assumes leftover mashed potato of a kind rather firmer than most people make today.
- The mash matters mostUse a floury potato — russet or King Edward — baked or boiled whole, then riced and left to steam dry. A wet, buttery, cream-loosened mash will slump and disintegrate in the fat.
- QuantitiesOne pound of mashed potato is roughly two cups, or about three medium potatoes before cooking. Two eggs to that weight makes a soft dropping batter; if it will not hold a shape on the spoon, work in a tablespoon or two of flour.
- SeasoningThe recipe gives none; any salt and pepper was presumably already in the mash it assumes the cook has to hand. Season the mixture and taste it before frying, since fried potato tastes flat without it.
- "Plenty of boiling fat"Deep fat at 350-365F, at least three inches deep. Fat is often described as boiling in nineteenth-century books; it is not boiling, and if it visibly smokes it is too hot and the drops will brown before the centre sets.
- The hot-spoon trickDipping the spoon in boiling water between drops is what keeps the mixture from clinging and tearing. It works, and it is worth keeping a small pan of water beside the fryer rather than substituting oil.
- Frying in batchesSix or eight drops at a time. Crowding drops the fat temperature and gives greasy, pale fritters. Two to three minutes a batch, turning once.
- DrainingSoft paper means unglazed kitchen paper or a paper bag; a wire rack over a tray works better and keeps the undersides crisp.
- YieldAbout twenty drops from a pound of potato, serving four as a side dish. Best eaten within minutes of frying.
Potato drops belong to a family of fried leftover-potato dishes — croquettes, potato puffs, pommes dauphine — that filled the vegetable chapters of late Victorian and Edwardian cookbooks because economical households cooked potatoes in quantity and expected the surplus to reappear at another meal. The terseness here is typical: the recipe assumes the cook already has cold mash on hand and needs only the method. The instruction about the spoon is the sort of detail that marks a recipe written by someone who had actually done it, and the parsley garnish reflects the period convention that any plain fried dish arrived at table with something green laid against it.