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To Bake Potatoes
To bake potatoes, the potato is placed in an oven of moderate temperature and subjected to a gradually increased heat, until the inside is thoroughly cooked; the skin has assumed a light brown color and a firm consistency, and a perfectly baked potato. An excellent method of baking potatoes: Put the potatoes into boiling water and let them boil rapidly from seven to fourteen minutes. Then bake in a hot oven until they are well cooked and have a rich brown skin. Parboiling potatoes in this manner heats them all through so quickly and thoroughly that the time required to bake them is reduced one-half.
When baked potatoes are taken from the oven, a gash about an inch in length should be made lengthwise in each potato and the ends pressed to widen the gash and permit steam to escape. Baked potatoes served in a deep dish lined with a napkin that can be lightly folded over so as to protect them from the cold air. Served in this manner they will remain hot and mealy for some time.
The method is sound and still worth following; only the oven language and a few habits need translating.
- "Moderate" then increasedModerate in period usage is usually taken as somewhere around 350F, with the "hot oven" of the second method higher again. If you skip the parboil and bake straight through, 400-425F for 50-60 minutes gives the firm brown skin the recipe is after.
- The parboil is the real pointSeven to fourteen minutes in rapidly boiling water heats the centre before the skin has time to set, and cuts oven time roughly in half. Drain and dry the potatoes thoroughly before they go in, or the skins steam instead of crisping.
- Choose a floury potato"Mealy" is the goal, so use russet or another high-starch baking potato. Waxy new potatoes will never give the dry, fluffy interior described.
- Prick before boiling or bakingThe original slashes only after cooking. A few fork punctures beforehand prevent the occasional potato from bursting in the oven.
- Slash immediatelyThe inch-long lengthwise gash matters more than it sounds. Trapped steam condenses inside the skin and makes the flesh dense and damp, so cut and squeeze the ends as soon as they leave the oven.
- No foil, no pan crowdingBake directly on a rack or an open sheet with space between them. Wrapping in foil, the modern shortcut, produces a steamed potato with a soft skin, the opposite of what this recipe wants.
- The napkin serviceA folded linen napkin lining a deep dish absorbs escaping steam while holding heat, which the recipe credits for keeping the potatoes hot and mealy. A clean tea towel in a deep bowl does the same job.
- DonenessA skewer should meet no resistance at the centre; roughly 45-60 minutes unparboiled, 20-30 after a parboil, depending on size. Allow one large or two medium potatoes per person.
Baked potatoes appear in nineteenth-century cookbooks less as a recipe than as a small technical argument, and this entry is a good example: the writer is defending a method against the complaint that baking takes too long and leaves the centre hard. The parboil-then-bake trick turns up in a number of household manuals of the period, alongside the same careful instructions about slashing the skin to release steam. That advice reflects real conditions in the period kitchen, where a wood or coal range gave uneven, slowly rising heat rather than a set temperature, so a cook learned to manage the fire as it climbed rather than dial it in. The napkin-lined dish belonged to a service tradition in which vegetables travelled some distance from kitchen to dining room; the linen absorbed steam that would otherwise soften the skins.