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Potato Patties
I 1½ cups boiled pota- 3 tablespoonfuls thick toes (sliced) meat gravy 2 tablespoonfuls grat- 1½ teaspoonfuls onioned cheese juice Salt and pepper Mix all together, place in buttered ramekins and heat in oven.
A quick way to use up boiled potatoes: they are bound with leftover gravy, sharpened with cheese and onion, and baked in individual dishes. The original assumes you already have cold potatoes and a cup of yesterday's gravy in the larder.
- The ingredient listRead as: 1½ cups boiled potatoes (sliced), 3 tablespoons thick meat gravy, 2 tablespoons grated cheese, 1½ teaspoons onion juice, salt and pepper.
- Oven temperatureNone is given; the dish needs only heating through. As a modern working figure, 375F for 15-20 minutes should warm the centres and colour the cheese; 400F if you want the tops browned faster.
- Onion juiceA standard flavouring of the period, made by grating a raw onion and pressing the pulp through a sieve or squeezing it in cloth. Half a teaspoon of grated onion pressed dry, or a pinch of onion powder, stands in for 1½ teaspoons of juice.
- Thick meat gravyThis means flour-thickened pan gravy from a roast, not thin jus. It is the only binder in the dish, so if your gravy is loose, reduce it or the mixture will be watery. Stock thickened with a little roux does the same job.
- The cheese'Grated cheese' in a household recipe of this kind would have meant a firm cheese suitable for grating. Anything firm and well flavoured works; a soft young cheese will just go greasy.
- RamekinsThe word here means small individual baking dishes, and the dish is baked rather than fried despite the name. Butter them well and expect the mixture to be spooned in rather than shaped.
- YieldAbout two generous or three small ramekins, enough as a side dish for two to three people.
Books of leftovers were a small publishing genre in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sitting between the frugality manual and the standard household cookbook, and they took for granted a kitchen that produced cold roast meat, its gravy, and boiled potatoes on a near-daily rhythm. Dishes made from cold boiled potato are common in them. The word "patty" had a looser sense then than now, covering small savoury preparations served in individual portions rather than specifically a shaped and fried cake, which is how a baked ramekin mixture keeps the name. Onion juice appears frequently in recipes of the era as a way of getting onion flavour without visible pieces or the time needed to cook them soft.