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To Boil Potatoes

A simple boiled potato dish prepared by cooking potatoes in salted water until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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To Boil Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the potatoes to uniform size.

  2. Place potatoes in a saucepan and cover with cold water.

  3. Add a pinch of salt.

Cook

  1. Bring water to a boil, adding cold water as needed to maintain a gentle boil.

  2. Once cooked, drain water and sprinkle a little salt over the potatoes.

  3. Let them dry at the side of the fire with saucepan lid off.

  4. Serve quickly on a napkin.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy body of the dish, which cooks until tender through boiling.
Cold water
Covers the potatoes and carries the heat evenly, so they cook through without breaking apart.

The step that matters

Maintaining a gentle boil. A rolling boil can crack and break the potato pieces, while a gentle simmer cooks them evenly. Adding cold water as needed keeps the temperature steady so the centers become tender without the outside falling apart.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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