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Jacket Potatoes
Plunge six medium-sized, well-cleaned, unpeeled potatoes into a quart of boiling water with a teaspoon salt; cover the pan and boil for thirty-five minutes. Remove, arrange on a hot dish enveloped in a napkin and serve.
A plain boiled potato in its skin, given here as a side dish rather than a baked one. Two details in the original need attention: the amount of water, and the assumption that all potatoes cook at the same rate.
- The water is shortA quart will not cover six medium potatoes in most pans, and the top ones will steam unevenly or scorch the pan dry. Use enough water to cover them by an inch, and keep the salt in proportion — about a teaspoon per quart.
- Jacket means skin, not ovenDespite the name, this is not a baked potato. "In the jacket" simply means cooked with the peel intact, which keeps the flesh from waterlogging and holds the potato together.
- Timing depends on sizeThirty-five minutes suits medium potatoes at a steady simmer. Test with a thin skewer at 25 minutes: it should meet no resistance at the centre. Overcooked jacket potatoes split and absorb water.
- Choose a waxy or all-purpose potatoFloury baking potatoes such as russets are more likely to break up in boiling water once the skin gives. Red-skinned and other waxy varieties, or an all-purpose potato such as Yukon Gold, hold their shape better.
- Simmer, do not boil hardA rolling boil knocks the skins loose. Bring to the boil, then hold at a bare simmer with the lid on.
- The napkinWrapping the dish in a folded napkin was standard service for potatoes in their skins: the cloth absorbs steam so the potatoes do not sit in their own condensation and turn clammy. A clean tea towel does the same job.
- YieldSix potatoes serves six as a side, or three or four generously. Serve at once with butter and salt; jacket potatoes go leaden as they cool.
Boiling potatoes in their skins was long a common way to cook them, and it persisted in nineteenth-century cookery books as the frugal, respectful way to treat a good potato — the skin was said to keep in flavour and, in Ireland and Scotland, the nourishment. The napkin-wrapped dish that this recipe ends with was a formal touch familiar from the service of boiled potatoes at table in Britain, where the cloth's job was to catch steam.