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A German Method of Cooking Potatoes

A historical recipe from The Book of Household Management, by Beeton, Mrs. (Isabella Mary) (1861).

A historical recipe

The Book of Household Management, by Beeton, Mrs. (Isabella Mary) (1861). Project Gutenberg eBook #10136.

From an old book: a historical recipe, not current advice. Its methods, additives and storage may be unsafe by today's standards. Its words name: preserving or pickling. Check current food-safety guidance before following this.

Source and licence

From The Book of Household Management, by Beeton, Mrs. (Isabella Mary) (1861). Digitised by Project Gutenberg, eBook #10136 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10136). Public domain in the USA; its status may differ elsewhere.

Read the original Public domain in the USA

What was changed: As printed, from the book's text; Project Gutenberg's header and licence removed. Ingredient lines were read out of the text by a program. A historical recipe, not current advice.

Germany. Associated with Germany by a demonym leading its title: German (confidence 0.55). "Associated with" means only that the evidence named here links this recipe to that place. A recipe isn't labelled as representing an entire country because a source associates it with one, and regional origins are kept where the source gives them.

  • Preserving. Old preserving methods may not make food safe to keep. Use current tested guidance.

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Ingredients

Method

  1. 1143.
  2. INGREDIENTS.--8 to 10 middling-sized potatoes, 3 oz.
  3. of butter, 2 tablespoonfuls of flour, 1/2 pint of broth, 2 tablespoonfuls of vinegar.
  4. Mode.--Put the butter and flour into a stewpan;
  5. stir over the fire until the butter is of a nice brown colour, and add the broth and vinegar;
  6. peel and cut the potatoes into long thin slices, lay them in the gravy, and let them simmer gently until tender, which will be in from 10 to 15 minutes, and serve very hot.
  7. A laurel-leaf simmered with the potatoes is an improvement.
  8. PRESERVING POTATOES.--In general, potatoes are stored or preserved in pits, cellars, pies, or camps;
  9. but, whatever mode is adopted, it is essential that the tubers be perfectly dry;
  10. otherwise, they will surely rot;
  11. and a few rotten potatoes will contaminate a whole mass.
  12. The pie, as it is called, consists of a trench, lined and covered with straw;
  13. the potatoes in it being piled in the shape of a house roof, to the height of about three feet.
  14. The camps are shallow pits, filled and ridged up in a similar manner, covered up with the excavated mould of the pit.
  15. In Russia and Canada, the potato is preserved in boxes, in houses or cellars, heated, when necessary, to a temperature one or two degrees above the freezing-point, by stoves.
  16. To keep potatoes for a considerable time, the best way is to place them in thin layers on a platform suspended in an ice-cellar: there, the temperature being always below that of active vegetation, they will not sprout;
  17. while, not being above one or two degrees below the freezing-point, the tubers will not be frostbitten.
  18. Another mode is to scoop out the eyes with a very small scoop, and keep the roots buried in earth;
  19. a third mode is to destroy the vital principle, by kiln-drying, steaming, or scalding;
  20. a fourth is to bury them so deep in dry soil, that no change of temperature will reach them;
  21. and thus, being without air, they will remain upwards of a year without vegetating.