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Texas Baked Irish Potatoes
Boil some good Irish potatoes; when done, mash, season with salt, pepper and butter; mince a large onion fine, mix well through the potatoes, put in oven and brown nicely. -Mrs. C. E. S., Galveston, Texas.
A three-line recipe with no quantities, no pan and no oven setting — normal for a contributed community recipe of the 1880s. The decisions left to you are all in the details.
- "Irish potatoes"In Southern cookbooks of this era, "Irish potato" distinguishes the ordinary white potato from the sweet potato, which was often simply called "potato." Use a floury variety such as russet; it mashes drier and browns better.
- Quantity and yieldAssume about 2 lb of potatoes and one large onion, which fills a shallow 8-inch dish and serves four to six. The proportion of one large onion to two pounds of potato is assertive — halve it if you want the onion in the background.
- The raw onion is the hingeMinced raw onion mixed into hot mashed potato only partly softens in the oven, and coarse mincing leaves crunchy, sharp pieces throughout. Mince very fine, or sweat the onion in the butter first if you want it sweet rather than pungent.
- Oven heat"Brown nicely" with no temperature given suggests a fairly hot oven; roughly 400–425°F for 25–35 minutes will do it, or run it under the broiler for the last few minutes. A moderate oven risks drying the top without colouring it.
- Butter and moistureMany period mashed-potato recipes used butter and sometimes a little of the cooking water or milk, though this one names only salt, pepper and butter. Keep the mash on the stiff side — a loose mash spreads and steams rather than forming a browned crust.
- SurfaceRough the top with a fork before baking. The raised ridges are what actually take colour; a smoothed surface browns unevenly.
Contributed recipes signed only with initials and a town, like this one from Galveston, were the backbone of nineteenth-century community and regional cookbooks. The name "Texas Baked Irish Potatoes" says less about Texan cooking than about vocabulary: across the South the unqualified word "potato" generally meant the sweet potato, so the white potato needed the qualifier "Irish," a usage conventionally traced to the association of the crop with Irish agriculture. The dish itself belongs to a large family of browned mashed-potato preparations that let a cook reheat leftovers and put something with a crust on the table; the same idea appears in period books as potato puff and scalloped potatoes, differing mainly in whether eggs, cream or onion go in.