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Baked Potatoes (Neatly wipe and place six)
Neatly wipe and place six good-sized, sound, unpeeled raw potatoes on a tin plate and set in a brisk oven to bake for forty-five minutes, taking care to turn them over once in a while. Remove and serve.
A bare-bones instruction that assumes a coal range and a cook who knows what "brisk" means. A few specifics make it reliable.
- "Brisk oven"Roughly 400 to 425F. At that heat a large potato may need longer than the forty-five minutes given; test with a skewer at the centre rather than trusting the clock.
- The tin plateA rimmed baking sheet does the same job. What matters is that the potatoes sit in open air with space between them, so steam escapes and the skin dries.
- PrickingThe original omits it. Pierce each potato two or three times with a fork before it goes in; a sealed potato under high heat can split messily.
- Which potatoThe original specifies only size and soundness, i.e. unblemished. A russet or other floury variety gives the mealy interior this method suits; waxy salad potatoes stay dense.
- TurningWorth doing on a solid-fuel range with hot spots, and still useful once at the halfway point in a modern oven for even browning.
- No oil, no foilThe dry skin is the point of the method. Oil softens it and foil steams it, which is a different dish altogether.
- YieldSix potatoes serve six as a side. Split and dress at the table with butter, salt and pepper, which the recipe leaves unsaid.
Plain baked potatoes earn a page in a book like this because the technique was not taken for granted: boiling was the commoner treatment for much of the nineteenth century, and baking whole in the skin was associated with hearth cookery and, later, with enclosed ovens of the cast-iron range. Single-sentence entries of this kind are common in recipe books of the period, written for a cook who needed the timing and nothing else. The instruction to "neatly wipe" rather than wash and scrub suggests potatoes stored in earth or a cellar rather than a washed and bagged supply.