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Potatoes Au Gratin
Take one quart of cold potatoes; two tablespoons of flour; one pint of milk; one teaspoon of chopped parsley; salt and pepper to taste.. Heat the butter, and add the flour. When the mixture is smooth and frothy, draw the pan to a cooler part of the range, and add the milk gradually and then the salt and pepper. Butter a graniteware or stone china platter and spread upon it the cold potato cut into cubes. Season with salt and pepper, and sprinkle with parsley. Cover the potatoes with the cream sauce, sprinkle with fine, buttered bread crumbs, and bake in the oven for twelve minutes.
POTATO PUFF (or Soufflé) -To two teacups of salted, peppered and finely mashed potatoes add two tablespoons of melted butter, and beat to a white cream. Stir in thoroughly two yolks of eggs that have been beaten separately until very light, and then a teacup of sweet milk. When the whole is nicely blended, add the whites of the eggs, stir slightly, pile the mass at once upon a wellbuttered dish, and bake about ten minutes.
Two related dishes for using up cold boiled potatoes, written for cooks who were expected to know the proportions of a white sauce by heart. A few gaps need filling before you start.
- The missing butterThe ingredient list calls for flour, milk and parsley but never names the butter the method tells you to heat. Use two tablespoons, equal to the flour, for a standard white sauce; you will want another tablespoon or so for the crumbs and the dish.
- Gratin without cheeseThere is no cheese here, and none is called for. In this period au gratin often referred to the browned crust of buttered crumbs rather than to a cheese sauce. Add grated cheese if you like, but the original is a crumb dish.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Twelve minutes is only long enough to heat through and colour the crumbs, so a hot oven is implied; something in the region of 400-425F suits. Everything in the dish is already cooked.
- "Draw the pan to a cooler part of the range"A wood or coal range had hot and cool zones rather than a dial. Simply lower the heat before the milk goes in, and add it gradually so the roux does not seize into lumps.
- Graniteware or stone chinaEnamelled steel or heavy earthenware. Any shallow ceramic or enamelled baking dish serves.
- QuantitiesA quart of cubed cold potato is roughly 1 1/2 lb cooked, and a pint of milk makes a sauce on the thin side, which is correct here since the potato absorbs it. This feeds four to six as a side.
- The teacup in the puffA teacup in books of this date was generally reckoned smaller than a standard cup, though the measure was not fixed. Err on the smaller side or the puff will be heavy.
- Beating the puffThe hinge of the second recipe is folding the whites in last and getting the dish into the oven at once, as the text says. Beaten whites left standing in warm potato collapse, and ten minutes is a short bake.
Butterick, the dress-pattern company, published cookbooks as part of a broader line of household manuals aimed at middle-class women running a kitchen without a trained cook, and this pair of recipes shows the priorities: both begin with cold leftover potato and turn it into something presentable at table. The white sauce that binds the gratin is the same basic preparation that runs through hundreds of American recipes of the era, often called simply cream sauce. The potato puff is a domesticated souffl id-nineteenth century onward, offering the lift of the French dish with none of its risk of public failure since a fallen potato puff still tastes like mashed potato.