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Stewed Potatoes
Cut cold baked or boiled potatoes into dice, put into a stew-pan with salt, a tiny bit of onion minced fine, and milk enough to half cover the potatoes. Set on the back of the stove and stew slowly, stirring with a fork occasionally, until all the milk is taken up. Season with butter and pepper and serve.
A plain use for yesterday's potatoes, and the whole thing hinges on cooking the milk down rather than boiling it hard. A few notes on the equipment and language of the original.
- "The back of the stove"On a wood or coal range this was the coolest zone, used for long slow reduction. On a modern burner that means low heat, just below a simmer, so the milk thickens without catching on the bottom.
- Quantity and yieldNo amounts are given. Something like four medium cold potatoes, about 1 lb diced, with enough milk to half cover them (roughly a cup), would serve three or four as a side. The original gives no time either: cook until the milk is taken up, which on a genuinely low heat may take considerably longer than a quarter of an hour.
- Choice of potatoCold boiled waxy potatoes hold their dice shape; cold baked russets break down and thicken the milk into something closer to a sauce. Both work, but they give different dishes.
- Whole milk mattersHousehold milk of the period was not homogenised, though skim milk was common enough, since cream was routinely taken off the top. Whole milk is the safer choice here: the fat helps the reduction stay smooth, and a very low-fat milk is more likely to catch or turn grainy as it tightens.
- Stirring with a forkNot fussiness. A fork lifts and turns the dice without mashing them, which a spoon will do once the potatoes have softened at the edges.
- Butter and pepper lastThe original adds both after the milk has been taken up, as seasoning rather than cooking fat, which gives the finished dish some gloss. Pepper to taste.
- The onion"A tiny bit" suggests something on the order of a teaspoon, minced fine; the quantity is small enough that it is likely meant to season the milk rather than register as onion.
Left-over cookery had its own small literature by the turn of the twentieth century, when thrift was framed less as poverty than as good management: a well-run household was one where nothing reached the bin. The method here — starch, dairy, gentle reduction — is a relative of the one behind creamed potatoes, potato gratins and chowders. The instruction to set the pan at the back of the stove dates the recipe as clearly as any ingredient does: it assumes a range with a permanent fire and a gradient of heat across its top, where a cook parked a pan and got on with something else.