Home › Game › A Mashed Potato Border
A Mashed Potato Border
A border of mashed potatoes is easily prepared. Wash eight potatoes of medium size, put them in cold water and add tablespoonful of salt to the water after it has begun to boil. Each should have a strip peeled around it to make it mealy. When the potatoes have boiled half an hour, drain them and shake them for a second; peel them instantly and mash them as rapidly as you can. Add a tablespoonful of butter and half cup of hot cream or milk, cold milk makes the potatoes heavy. Beat these ingredients in with a fork or wire spoon and add beaten yolks of eggs. Pack the potato mixture into the plain mould, which should be well buttered. Let the mashed potato stand for two or three minutes on the table. The border when it is turned out on a warm platter will be well buttered from the mould. Set it for a moment in a hot oven, while you dish up a brown fricassee of veal to fill the center.
A ring of mashed potato used as an edible serving dish for stews, fricassees and game. The technique is sound; only the vagueness needs filling in.
- The hinge: keep everything hotPeel and mash the potatoes the moment they are drained, and use cream or milk that is hot. Cold dairy and cooled potato give the gluey, heavy border the recipe warns against.
- QuantitiesEight medium potatoes is roughly 2 1/2 lb, probably enough border for about six, though the recipe gives no yield. Use a starchy variety such as russet; waxy potatoes hold a shape poorly.
- The peeled stripCutting a band of skin from each potato lets steam escape while boiling in the jacket, so the flesh stays drier and mealier. It is worth doing, though pricking with a fork achieves much the same.
- Salt in the waterAdding salt only once the water boils is a period habit with no real effect; salt the water from the start. A tablespoon in a large pot is not excessive for potatoes cooked in their skins.
- Boiling timeHalf an hour suits medium potatoes, but test with a skewer rather than the clock: whole potatoes vary widely, and undercooked centres will show up as lumps.
- Egg yolksThe number is not given. Two yolks for this quantity is a reasonable choice, enough to set the border without turning it custardy.
- The mouldA "plain mould" here means an unornamented ring or border mould, generously buttered. Pressing the potato in firmly and letting it rest two or three minutes allows it to settle so it unmoulds in one piece.
- Hot oven"Hot" in period usage corresponds roughly to 425 to 450F, though the book gives no temperatures. A few minutes there dries and lightly colours the surface; longer and the border cracks. A grill or broiler for a minute or two does the same job.
- ServingFill the centre at the last moment with something fairly thick. A thin sauce will soak into the potato and collapse the wall.
Mashed potato borders belong to the later nineteenth-century fashion for entrees served within a rim of something starchy -- en bordure in French kitchen language -- where rice, semolina, duchesse potato or forcemeat was moulded into a ring and the made dish spooned into the well. Duchesse potato, mash enriched with butter and egg yolk as here, was a common choice because the yolks let it hold a shape and take colour in the oven. The same mixture piped rather than moulded became the ruffled potato edging still seen around shepherd's pie.