This is a Southern dish, and not so homely as it would seem from the mere reading.
Mash as usual, beating up light with butter and milk, but not so soft as not to take any shape you like to give them. Make a rounded hillock, or a four-sided pyramid of them upon a flat dish. Brush this all over with beaten yolk of egg, set in the oven a few minutes to harden the coating, and send to table.
Scrape, wash, lay in cold water half an hour; then cook tender in boiling water. Drain well, mash with a wooden spoon, or beetle, work in a good piece of butter, and season with pepper and salt. Heap up in a vegetable dish, and serve very hot.
1 lb. mashed potato, rubbed through a colander. ¼ lb. of butter, creamed with the sugar. 6 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately. 1 lemon, squeezed into the potato while hot. 1 teaspoonful of nutmeg and the same of mace. 2 cups of white sugar.
Cream the butter and sugar; add the yolks, the spice, and beat in the potato gradually until it is very light. At last, whip in the whites. Bake in open shells of paste. Eat cold.
When making these pies on Saturday—forecasting Monday’s needs and superabundance of cares—prepare more pastry than you need for the two large pies which the above quantity of potato mixture will fill, and set aside a trim roll of raw crust to be rolled out in due time—we shall see to what end. I take it for granted (once more) that all of Sunday’s receipts will be diligently conned on the day when the old distich tells us, even “lazy people work the best.”
This potato pie will be pronounced delicious.
These will make a pretty finish to what I flatter myself with the hope that you will find a good, and not inelegant repast.
First Week. Monday. —— Blanche’s Soup. Duck Paté. Succotash. Sweet Potatoes, Boiled. Crab-apple Jelly. —— Cup Custard, Boiled. Cut or Fancy Cake. ——
Strain out the vermicelli left in yesterday’s “stock.” Heat very hot, and add two cups of milk in which has been stirred a tablespoonful of rice-flour, or, if you cannot get that, corn-starch. Stir until it thickens; take out a cupful and pour it over two beaten eggs. Return to the soup, taste, and supply what seasoning is needed; lift from the fire and leave covered five minutes before pouring into the tureen.