Wash and brush medium-sized potatoes, wipe dry and lay them on a dish, then push into a hot oven for thirty to forty minutes; when done serve on a napkin, or else they may be steamed or boiled, then baked and peeled; cover with butter, color in the oven, and serve in a vegetable dish.
Two methods in one entry: potatoes baked dry from raw, or cooked first and finished in the oven with butter. Both are straightforward once the period shorthand is decoded.
Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and its vegetable chapters are as much a reference list as a set of recipes: dozens of numbered potato preparations set down in a few lines each, on the assumption that a professional cook needed the outline and nothing more. That the baked potato appears at all among the Anna, Biarritz, duchesse and soufflee treatments is a reminder that even a restaurant of Delmonico's standing served plain food, dressed up only by the linen napkin it arrived on. Potatoes baked whole in their skins were long treated as rustic cooking; the napkin, the vegetable dish and the French heading are the marks of a kitchen bringing a homely thing to a formal table.