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Scallop of Onion and Potato
1/2 cup milk cup cold creamed cup milk onions I 1½ cups cold potatoes 1 tablespoonful butter Salt and pepper Butter a baking - dish. Slice half of the potatoes and season. Add the creamed onions. Cover with the rest of the potatoes, moisten with the milk, and dot with bits of butter. Bake one-half hour.
A simple layered gratin built from two leftovers. The quantities in the ingredient line have run together, but the working proportions are roughly a cup of cold creamed onions, a cup of milk, a cup and a half of cold cooked potatoes, and a tablespoon of butter.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as was usual when ranges had no thermometer. For a half-hour bake on already-cooked ingredients, a moderate oven of around 350F is a reasonable modern setting, long enough to heat through.
- "Creamed onions"Boiled small onions bound in a white sauce, a standard side dish of the period and a common leftover. If you have only plain boiled onions, slacken them with a few spoonfuls of thick bechamel first, or the dish will be watery.
- Milk quantityThe milk is there only to moisten. The garbled ingredient line makes the exact amount uncertain, so add it cautiously -- to about halfway up the layers -- since the creamed onions already carry sauce.
- Slice thicknessCold boiled potatoes slice cleanly at about a quarter inch. Anything thinner collapses into the sauce and you lose the layered structure the recipe is after.
- SeasoningThe recipe seasons the first layer of potatoes as it is laid down; do the same with the upper layer rather than salting only at the end.
- BrowningA half-hour in a moderate oven heats the dish but gives little colour. A few minutes under the broiler at the end, or a scattering of buttered crumbs before baking, finishes the top.
- YieldA dish of this size serves two as a supper course or four as a side.
"Scallop" here is used in the sense of a dish baked in layers in a shallow dish with liquid and butter -- no shellfish involved, and in this instance no breadcrumbs, though many scalloped recipes of the period do call for them. Creamed onions were a familiar dish on the American table, including at holiday dinners, which helps explain why a cup of them could be assumed as a leftover. The pairing with cold boiled potatoes reflects a kitchen where both vegetables were cooked plainly and in quantity, and expected to reappear the next day in a different shape.