Potatoes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Choose potatoes of similar size.
Scrub and peel them thinly in clean water.
For new potatoes, scrape them.
Boil
Place potatoes in a saucepan.
Cover with cold water.
Add 1 teaspoon of salt.
Simmer gently until tender, about 30 minutes.
Check doneness with a skewer.
Drain potatoes.
Let them stand by the fire to dry.
Steam potatoes until tender if preferred.
Cook new potatoes in boiling water.
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; their starch softens as they cook through.
The step that matters
Simmer gently until tender. Boiling hard can break the potatoes apart before their centres are cooked, while gentle simmering cooks them evenly. Testing with a skewer confirms they are tender all the way through.
“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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