Mashed Potatoes
Everyone thinks they can make so simple a dish as that of mashed potatoes, but it is the excellence of art to produce good mashed, as well as good boiled potatoes. In fact, I believe there is nothing so difficult in cookery as to properly boil a potato. To mash them, then, first boil them properly. Put in a hot crock basin, which can be placed at the side of the fire, half a cupful or more of cream, a tablespoonful of butter, plenty of salt and white pepper, and let them get hot. One of the secrets of good mashed potatoes is the mixing of the ingredients all hot. Now add six or seven potatoes the moment they are done, and mash them without stopping until they are as smooth as possible; then work them a very few moments with a fork, and serve them immediately. Much depends upon mashed potatoes being served at table hot and freshly made.
The instructions are sound and need almost no translation; the value is in the two details the author treats as secrets. Everything hot, and served the moment it is made.
- The hinge: warm everythingCold cream and a cold bowl chill the potato, and the mash is likelier to turn stiff and pasty. Heat the cream and butter together until steaming and warm the bowl; drain the potatoes and mash them while they are still steaming dry.
- Hot crock basinA thick earthenware bowl set near the fire. A metal mixing bowl set over a pan of simmering water, or a heavy pot on the lowest burner, does the same job of holding heat while you work.
- QuantitiesSix or seven potatoes means medium ones, roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb, serving four to six. Half a cup of cream and a tablespoon of butter is restrained by modern standards; add cream a little at a time until the texture suits you.
- Choose a floury potatoThe author's insistence that boiling a potato properly is the hardest thing in cookery may reflect the variability of the potatoes then available. Russets or another high-starch variety, boiled in salted water until a knife meets no resistance, then drained and left a moment to steam off, will do most of the work for you.
- "Mash without stopping"Read this as work quickly, not work hard. A ricer or food mill gives the smoothest result; a hand masher is fine. Do not use a food processor or beat with a machine, which ruptures the starch cells and produces glue.
- White pepperProbably specified so no black flecks show in a white dish. It also tastes different from black pepper, a little more musty and floral. Black pepper works if you do not mind the look.
- ServingMashed potato held warm for half an hour skins over and tightens. If you must hold it, cover the surface directly with buttered paper or a film of hot cream and keep it over hot water, then beat the cream in at the last moment.
The essay-like tone here, and the confident claim that boiling a potato is the hardest task in cookery, belongs to a nineteenth-century tradition of English and American cookery writing in which the plainest dishes were treated as tests of a cook's judgement rather than of her recipe collection. It is a fair claim for the period: potato varieties were inconsistent and storage was uncertain. That this recipe sits in the Game section of the book is less likely an error than a reflection of how such volumes were often organised, by menu or course rather than strictly by ingredient. Cream and butter beaten into hot potato is much older than this book.