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Potatoes, Ancienne
Wipe six medium, even-sized raw potatoes, place in an ordinary earthen pot with two gills water and teaspoon salt, cover the potatoes with a wet, clean, coarse towel and place the cover on the pot. Set the earthen pot beside the red fire on the range and let steam for an hour, remove, lift up the towel, dress the potatoes on a hot dish in a folded napkin and serve.
A steaming method rather than a boiling one: the potatoes cook in their skins in a scant inch of salted water, insulated by a damp cloth. The point is a dry, floury potato with no waterlogging.
- Two gills of waterA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup. In a small covered pot that is enough to generate steam for an hour without ever submerging the potatoes.
- The earthen potAny heavy lidded pot works — enamelled cast iron or a clay bean pot. The recipe gives no reason for the earthenware, though it holds gentle heat evenly and is unlikely to scorch the little water that is there.
- "Beside the red fire"This means the cooler edge of a coal range top, not over direct flame. On a modern stove use the lowest setting with a diffuser, or the equivalent gentle heat of a low oven.
- The wet towelThe damp cloth laid over the potatoes traps steam and keeps condensation off their skins. Use plain cotton or linen with no fabric softener, wrung out well, and tuck the edges inside so nothing overhangs a burner.
- Timing and sizeThe recipe specifies only medium, even-sized potatoes. Test with a skewer at 45 minutes; smaller potatoes will be done sooner, and overcooked steamed potatoes collapse when handled.
- Choice of potatoA floury variety — russet, Idaho, Maris Piper — gives the dry, mealy interior this method is designed for. Waxy potatoes steam perfectly well but read as ordinary boiled potatoes.
- Skins onThe instruction to wipe rather than pare implies the potatoes go in unpeeled, though the recipe does not say so outright. Scrub rather than merely wipe, and check the water has not boiled dry before serving.
- Serving and yieldSix potatoes serve four to six as a side. The folded napkin on the hot dish absorbs steam so the potatoes do not sit and sweat; send butter and coarse salt separately.
The name simply flags the method as the old way — potatoes cooked in a covered earthen crock at the margin of the fire. Steaming in the skin was understood to give a drier potato than boiling in a full pot. The folded napkin is a service habit of the period: potatoes, and boiled fish alike, were dished on linen so the cloth could take up the steam that would otherwise turn a mealy potato sodden between kitchen and table. Its appearance in a cosmopolitan collection like this one reflects the era's appetite for dishes labelled by nation or by antiquity, even when, as here, the dish is little more than a potato and a cup of water handled attentively.