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Creamed Potatoes
Dice cold potatoes. Melt in a saucepan one tablespoon of butter for every cup of potatoes. Add the potatoes, tossing them about in the butter, dredge lightly with flour, 1 tablespoon for each tablespoon of butter. Season with salt and pepper, cover with milk, allow to cook five minutes and serve.
A cooked-potato dish built on a white sauce made in the pan rather than separately. The ratios are given per cup of potato, so it scales cleanly.
- The ratioOne tablespoon butter and one tablespoon flour per cup of diced potato, then milk to cover — roughly 1/2 to 3/4 cup milk per cup of potato. That is a standard medium white sauce assembled around the potatoes.
- Cook the flour"Dredge lightly with flour" is the hinge. Let the flour bubble in the butter for a minute before the milk goes in, or the sauce tastes pasty.
- Add milk warmAdd milk gradually -- Pour the milk in two or three additions rather than all at once, stirring as it thickens, so the flour disperses instead of setting in lumps that cannot be stirred out without breaking the potatoes. Some cooks warm the milk first.
- Five minutes is rightThe potatoes are already cooked; the time is only for the sauce to thicken. Longer, and the dice begin to slump and cloud the sauce. Stir gently and shake the pan rather than beating it.
- Which potatoesLeftover boiled or steamed waxy potatoes hold their dice. Baked russets crumble. Cold potatoes also dice more cleanly than warm ones.
- SeasoningFlour-thickened milk swallows salt; taste again at the end. A grating of nutmeg or a spoonful of chopped parsley or chives at the finish is period-appropriate and welcome.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Four cups of diced potato, roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb cooked, would serve about four as a side dish.
Creamed vegetables were a mainstay of American home cooking from the late nineteenth century into the mid twentieth, and the technique here is the plainest possible application of the white sauce that domestic-science teaching made central: butter, flour, milk, salt, pepper, and whatever needed using up. The specification of cold potatoes suggests this is a leftovers recipe, for a household that would have had boiled potatoes on hand.