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Potato Soufflé
Boil four good-sized mealy potatoes, pass them through a sieve; scald in a clean sauce-pan half tea-cup of sweet milk and tablespoon of good butter, add to the potato with a little salt and pepper, and beat to a cream; add one at a time, the yolks of four eggs, beating thoroughly, drop a small pinch of salt into the whites and beat them to a stiff froth, add them to the mixture, beating as little as possible; have ready a well-buttered baking-dish, large enough to permit the soufflé to rise without running over; bake twenty minutes in a brisk oven, serve at once, and in the same dish in which it was baked. It should be eaten with meats that have gravies.
A straightforward potato soufflé that depends almost entirely on how the whites are handled and how fast the oven is. Two details in the original need translating: the teacup and the "brisk" oven.
- The hinge: fold, do not beatThe original says to add the whites "beating as little as possible," which is the whole technique. Fold them in with a spatula in three additions until barely combined; overmixing collapses the foam and you get a dense potato pudding.
- "Brisk oven"A hot oven, generally reckoned somewhere around 400-425F. Twenty minutes at that heat gives a set edge and a soft centre in a shallow dish. If your dish is deep and narrow, expect closer to 25-30 minutes.
- Half a tea-cup of milkA 19th-century teacup is generally reckoned at 4 fl oz, so half a teacup is about 1/4 cup. Sizes varied, and the amount is not critical: you want the potato loose enough to beat smooth but still able to hold a shape.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh, unsoured milk, as opposed to the buttermilk or clabbered milk many households kept on hand. Whole milk is the intended thing.
- Mealy potatoesRussets or another high-starch baking potato. Waxy red or new potatoes turn gluey when riced and will not lighten. Four good-sized potatoes is roughly 1 1/2 to 2 lb.
- Sieve or ricerPassing hot boiled potato through a sieve is what a ricer or food mill now does in a fraction of the time. Do it while the potatoes are hot and steaming dry; never use a food processor, which develops the starch into paste.
- The dishA well-buttered 2-quart dish, filled no more than two-thirds; the original stresses it must be large enough for the souffle to rise without running over. Butter it thoroughly right up the sides so the mixture can climb.
- Yield and servingServes four as a side. The instruction to serve at once is not politeness: a soufflé of this kind begins to sink within a few minutes of leaving the oven, which is also why it goes to the table in its baking dish.
Soufflés are French; contact with French cuisine brought soufflés into American cookbooks, and by the time The Dixie Cook Book appeared they offered a household kitchen a way to demonstrate French technique without French equipment: the whole thing needs a sieve, a whisk, and a hot oven. The potato version uses a cheap, always-available vegetable, and the starch stabilises the egg foam and makes the dish far more forgiving than a cheese or fruit soufflé. The closing note that it "should be eaten with meats that have gravies" places it in the role a potato purée or Yorkshire pudding would fill at a roast dinner.