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Baked Potatoes
Place a pound or two of potatoes as nearly an equal size as possible in a bowl of water and scrub them thoroughly, then take them out and wipe them dry with a cloth, place them in a hot oven, and bake for an hour, when they should be quite soft and mealy; fold them in a napkin spread over a dish, and serve with butter and seasoning.
A plain instruction that works exactly as written, provided you read "hot oven" as a number and choose the right potato.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives no number; "a hot oven" in period usage is generally taken as somewhere around 400-450F. At that heat a large baking potato may well be soft before the hour the recipe specifies, and smaller ones sooner, so test rather than trust the clock.
- Choose a mealy potatoThe recipe promises "soft and mealy," which only a high-starch variety delivers — russet or Idaho. Waxy red or new potatoes bake to a dense, damp interior no matter how long they sit in the oven.
- Why they are driedWiping the scrubbed skins dry is not fussiness. A wet surface steams before it can crisp, and the skin is half the point of a baked potato.
- Prick themOscar does not say to, but pierce each potato two or three times with a fork before it goes in. Steam builds under an intact skin and an occasional potato will split or burst.
- Test for donenessA skewer should meet no resistance at the center; an internal temperature of about 205-210F is the usual modern target for a fully fluffy interior.
- The napkinFolding the potatoes into a cloth on the serving dish keeps them hot at table. It also traps steam, which softens the skins — if you want them crisp, serve them uncovered and split them open at once to let the steam escape.
- Yield and seasoningA pound or two serves two to four as a side. "Butter and seasoning" means butter, salt and pepper brought to the table; the potatoes are split and dressed by each diner.
Baked potatoes need no invention story, but their presence in a Waldorf-Astoria cookbook is worth noting: Oscar Tschirky's 1896 volume is enormous and deliberately comprehensive, running from elaborate hotel garnishes down to the plainest domestic staples. The instruction to serve potatoes "folded in a napkin spread over a dish" follows the same reasoning as a napkin-lined basket of rolls ” service that keeps heat in without a lid. Potatoes baked in their skins were also the cheapest possible form of the vegetable, requiring no peeling, no fat and no attention, which is why the method turns up in nineteenth-century household manuals as well as in restaurant books.