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To Boil Potatoes
Pare the potatoes; cover them with cold water; boil them gently until they are done. Pour off the water and sprinkle salt over them; then with a spoon, take each potato and lay it into a clean, warm cloth; twist this so as to press all the moisture from the potato, turn it carefully into a dish placed before the fire. Send them to the table immediately. Potatoes cooked in this way are mashed without the slightest trouble.
A plain boiled potato with one unusual finishing step: each potato is squeezed dry in a cloth before serving. The technique is sound and still worth using when you want a dry, floury potato.
- Choose a floury potatoThe method only pays off with a high-starch variety — russet, King Edward, Maris Piper. Waxy potatoes will not go mealy and will smear rather than crumble in the cloth.
- Cold water startCovering with cold water and bringing the pot up slowly is deliberate: it cooks the outside and centre at closer to the same rate, so the edges do not disintegrate before the middle is tender. Salted water is now standard, though the original salts after draining.
- "Boil gently"A bare simmer, not a rolling boil. Hard boiling knocks the surfaces apart and waterlogs them, which is exactly what the cloth is meant to undo. Whole pared potatoes of medium size need roughly 20-25 minutes; test with a skewer.
- The clothUse a clean, dry, lint-free tea towel or a doubled square of cheesecloth, warmed. Twisting a hot potato in it is uncomfortable — hold the cloth in a folded pad rather than gripping the potato itself. Expect the towel to stain.
- Why it worksPressing the moisture out leaves the starch granules drier and looser, which is what makes them mash without lumps. The older instruction to "dry off" drained potatoes over low heat in the empty pan for a minute aims at much the same thing with less handling.
- "Before the fire"The dish is being kept warm in the radiant heat of an open hearth. A very low oven, or a warmed serving bowl covered with a cloth rather than a lid, does the job; a tight lid traps the moisture you just pressed out.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Reckon on 6-8 oz of potato per person as a side, more if they are to be mashed.
Boiled potatoes appear in a great many nineteenth-century English and American household manuals, and the fussiness of instructions like this one reflects a real anxiety about sogginess in an era when potatoes were a daily staple rather than an occasional side. The horror of the "watery" potato runs through the period's cookery writing: writers such as Eliza Acton and Mrs. Beeton stress drying potatoes after draining and serving them promptly. The cloth-twisting trick has a modern descendant in kitchens where riced potato for gnocchi or pommes pur here is the difference between a light dough and a paste.