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Mashed Potatoes
Peel and wash the potatoes and put them in a bowl of cold water and let them soak there for an hour or so and then put them into a saucepan with enough salted water to cover and boil gently for three-quarters of an hour. When they are done drain off all the water and put the potatoes into a large mortar or bowl and pound them well. To each pound of pulp add two ounces of butter to a teacupful of milk in a saucepan and warm it over the fire, then stir in the mashed potatoes, using care not to get them too wet; place the potatoes after they have been well mashed into a vegetable dish, mark it over with a fork and brown it in the oven or with a salamander, and serve.
A straightforward hotel-kitchen mash, with two habits worth adjusting: the long boil and the mortar.
- The hinge: warm the milk and butter firstAdding cold dairy to hot potato pulp cools the mass and encourages overworking. Melt the butter into the warmed milk, then stir the mashed potatoes into it, as the recipe directs.
- Skip the soak, cut the boilThe hour in cold water was most likely insurance against peeled potatoes discolouring before service; the recipe gives no reason, and it does nothing for flavour. Whole potatoes need three-quarters of an hour, but cut into even 2-inch pieces they are tender in 15 to 20 minutes.
- TeacupfulA period teacup is usually reckoned at around 6 fluid ounces rather than the modern 8-ounce measuring cup, though the size varied. Start with 1/2 cup of milk per pound of potato and add more only if needed — the instruction not to get them too wet is the operative one.
- Two ounces of butterThat is 4 tablespoons, or half a stick, per pound of cooked potato. Generous but not unusual for the period; scale down if you like.
- Mortar and poundA ricer or food mill gives the same smooth pulp with less risk. Never use a food processor or blender: the potato starch turns to glue in seconds.
- SalamanderA long-handled iron plate heated red and passed over the surface to glaze it. A broiler set high does the same job in two or three minutes; in a conventional oven, 425F for 10 to 15 minutes.
- Potato choiceOscar does not specify, but a floury potato — russet or a similar baking type — mashes drier and lighter. Waxy potatoes resist and go sticky under pounding.
- YieldA pound of potatoes as written serves two to three as a side dish.
Mashed potato was already old and unremarkable by the time Oscar Tschirky set it down around 1896, which is precisely why its presence in a Waldorf book is interesting: the volume records the working repertoire of a large New York hotel kitchen, plain vegetable dishes included. The details that date it are the tools rather than the technique — a large mortar or bowl for the pounding, and a salamander for the glaze, the freestanding iron implement that gave its name to the overhead broilers still called salamanders in professional kitchens. Forking the surface into ridges before browning might be read as a hotel habit as much as a culinary one: the raised edges catch the heat and colour first, so a dish sent to the dining room looks finished rather than merely spooned out.