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To Boil Potatoes with Their Skins on

Boiled potatoes with skins on, served hot.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Choose potatoes of similar size and wash them thoroughly.

  2. Place the potatoes in a saucepan and cover them with water and a little salt.

Cook

  1. Bring the potatoes to a boil.

  2. Reduce heat and let them simmer until tender, checking with a fork.

  3. Drain the water.

  4. Let the potatoes dry by the fire.

Serve

  1. Peel the potatoes carefully and serve hot, with or without 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
Are the main ingredient; their starch cooks soft and fluffy inside the skin.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender, not boiling hard. A gentle simmer cooks the potatoes evenly through, while a hard boil can break the outsides apart before the centers are tender. Testing with a fork shows when the starch has softened all the way to the middle.

“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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