Potato flour

“ Potato Bread with Whole Wheat Flour.—Take a half gill of liquid yeast made as for Boiled Potato Yeast No. 2, and add milk, sterilised and cooled to lukewarm, to make a pint. And one cup of well-mashed, mealy potato and one cup of white flour, or enough to make a rather thick batter Beat thoroughly, cover, and set to rise. When well risen, add sufficient whole-wheat flour to knead. The quantity will vary somewhat with the brand of flour used, but about four and one fourth cupfuls will in general be needed. Knead well, let it rise in mass and again in the loaf, and bake. ”

“ An affected potato, unless its juices were thoroughly fermented, and decomposition commenced, will yield quite as good starch as the healthy root, and all this may be considered as saved. Potato starch or farina, when mixed with flour, makes a wholesome and palatable bread. In some districts the doubtful potatoes are given to the cattle in quantities, and are considered excellent feeding. ”

“ This new system of turning the potato into a condition in which it can be readily distributed has, quite naturally, developed in the country which has the largest potato production of the world, Germany. Factories for the crushing and drying of the potato and turning the product into flour for man, flakes and cubes for animals, or alcohol for the chemical industry and also as a substitute for petrol, have grown from about a dozen a few years ago to over 400 in 1914 and 840 in 1916, with a capacity to turn into this condensed form more than 1,000,000,000 bushels of potatoes a year. ”

“ Some of the more important ingredients are lost when potatoes are pared, and it is also more economical to boil them before paring. The cold boiled potatoes may be cut up and used for potato salad, or thinly sliced after being skinned and placed in a baking dish alternately with a cream sauce consisting of milk, butter and flour, and seasoned with salt and pepper, having the first and last layer cream sauce. Sprinkle bread crumbs liberally over the top, dot with hits of butter and bake in a moderate oven about 20 minutes until the top is nicely browned. ”

“ Potato starch, dextrine, or the pressed pulp of turnips, and beet-root, when added to flour, yield a mixture the nutritive value of which is equal to the entire potato, or lower still, but no one can consider the change of grain or flour into a food of equal value with potatoes or rice an improvement. ”

“ POTATO SALAD.—I do not know much about salads different from the every day style, with the exception of an old fashioned German potato salad. Boil your potatoes with the jackets, peel and slice while hot; heat bacon drippings in which glaze onions which must be cut very fine, then add flour, brown, add diluted vinegar, let it come to a boil, cool, add a little sweet cream, turn it over your potatoes, which were previously seasoned with pepper and salt. Garnish with either sliced or chopped hard boiled eggs and green parsley. ”

“ When the skins crack in boiling, it is no proof that they are done, as too much fire under the pot will cause the skins of some potatoes to break while the inside is hard.
After March, when potatoes are old, it is best to pare them before boiling and to cut out all the blemishes. It is then better to mash them always before they are sent to table. Mash them when quite hot, using a potato-beetle for the purpose; add to them a piece of fresh butter, and a little salt, and, if convenient, some milk, which will greatly improve them. ”

“ Cold mashed potatoes may be made into croquettes by adding to each pint four tablespoonfuls of heated milk, the yolks of two eggs, a tablespoonful of chopped parsley, a teaspoonful of grated onion, a quarter of a teaspoonful of pepper; stir over the fire until the mixture is thoroughly heated; form into cylinder-shaped croquettes, dip in egg and rolled bread crumbs and fry in smoking hot fat. Potato croquettes are more difficult to fry than meat croquettes ”

“ Steamed potatoes probably lose less of their potash juices than when boiled; but this is uncertain, as the modicum of distilled water condensed upon the potato and continually renewed may wash away as much as the larger quantity of hard water in which the boiled potato is immersed.
Those who eat an abundance of fruit, of raw salads, and other vegetables supplying a sufficiency of potash to the blood, may peel and boil their potatoes; but the poor Irish peasant, who depends upon the potato for all his sustenance, requires that they shall supply him with potash. ”

“ Boil the potatoes very soft, then peel and mash them fine. Put in salt, and very little butter—then rub them with the flour—wet the flour with lukewarm water—then work in the yeast, and flour till stiff to mould up. It will rise quicker than common wheat bread, and should be baked as soon as risen, as it turns sour very soon. The potatoes that the bread is made of should be mealy, and mixed with the flour in the proportion of one-third of potatoes to two-thirds of flour. ”

“ When forming part of a mixed diet, no substance is more wholesome than the potato. Even the wild potato found in the Yellowstone Country is thought one of the best of edible wild roots.
Boiled Potatoes.—To retain the highest amount of nourishment, potatoes should be boiled with their skins on. When so treated, they are twice as rich in potassa salts as those which have first been peeled. It is a good plan to place them in the oven or on top of the range after boiling them, thereby allowing all surplus moisture to escape. ”

“ Raw potatoes, fed occasionally and in small quantities, are a good tonic for stock of any kind which is kept principally on hay; but all experiments show that when the potato is used for fattening purposes, the tubers should in some way be cooked, that the animal to which they are fed may derive from them the greatest possible amount of nutriment. Repeated experiments demonstrate the fact that horned cattle or hogs lay on as much fat from the consumption of two thirds of a given quantity of potatoes properly cooked as they will by eating the entire quantity in a raw state. ”

“ For this reason scientific directors bid us beware of the water in which potatoes are boiled-into which, it appears, the evil principle is drawn off; and they caution us not to shred them into stews without previously suffering the slices to lie for an hour or so in salt and water. These cautions are worth attention.
The most usual modes of preparing the potato for the table are by roasting or boiling. These processes are so simple that it is commonly supposed every cook understands them without special directions; and yet there is scarcely an uninstructed cook who can boil or roast a potato. ”

“ The best part of a potato, or the most nutritious, is next to the skin, therefore they should be pared very thinly, if at all; then, if old, the cores should be cut out, thrown into cold water salted a little, and boiled until soft enough for a fork to pierce through easily; drain immediately, and replace the kettle on the fire with the cover partly removed, until they are completely dried. New potatoes should be put into boiling water, and when partly done salted a little. They should be prepared just in time for cooking by scraping off the thin outside skin. ”

“ On rather poor, sandy soil, manured in the hill with wood-ashes, common salt, and plaster only, it will produce in ordinary seasons two hundred bushels per acre of sound, merchantable tubers, that will always command the highest market price. Any potato cultivated for a long series of years will gradually become finer in texture and better in quality; but its liability to disease will also be greatly increased. ”

“ By the English peasantry the potatoe is by no means esteemed as it deserves. In addition to its value for culinary uses, it might, in a very essential degree, be made to serve as a substitute for bread. If duly prepared, and mixed with a nearly equal portion of wheat flour, it may even be made into loaves. A kind of cheese may be made, by reducing potatoes to the consistence of paste, adding an equal quantity of the curd from which cheese is made, with a little salt and some other ingredients, mixing the whole together, and forming them in moulds. ”

“ When they are pared, they should be baked in a dish, and oil of some kind added, to prevent their outsides from becoming burned.
MASHED POTATOES
Pare and boil or steam six or eight large potatoes. If boiled, drain when tender, and let set in the kettle for a few minutes, keeping them covered, shaking the kettle occasionally to prevent scorching. Mash with a wire potato masher, or, if convenient, press through a colander; add salt, a lump of butter, and sufficient hot milk to moisten thoroughly. Whip with the batter whip, or wooden spoon, until light and fluffy. ”

“ The potato contains a trace of sugar and notable quantities of other carbohydrates than starch and sugar, namely, fiber. It also contains a very small proportion of nitrogen and mineral matter.
The potato is grown chiefly in temperate climates. It flourishes particularly well in the northern part of Europe, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and in the northern portion of the United States. The northern part of Maine, especially, is noted for the production of potatoes of high edible qualities. It grows very well also in the southern part of the United States. ”

“ Often it is served in a deep dish, which is another mistake; for the potato, when light and white, is tempting enough to serve on a flat dish where it may be seen. Potatoes that are to be served in this way should be mashed the moment they are cooked, and not set aside for a more convenient time. They may then be moistened with milk or cream and be seasoned with butter, pepper, and salt, in measure to the richness desired, and whipped until, like the whites of eggs, they become white and spongy from the air imprisoned in the cells. Mashed potato may be served in a great variety of ways. ”

“ The raw potatoes are peeled, grated and pressed dry in a cloth. Bring the milk to boil, pour in the farina slowly and boil it 3 to 4 minutes, stirring constantly. Mix the grated potato with the boiling farina, yolks of eggs, salt and beaten whites of eggs. Fry the roll cubes in butter very crisp. Rinse your hands in cold water, make dumplings from the mixture with the roll cubes in the center. While the dumplings are being made the salt water is brought to boil and t'he dumplings are put in for 15 to 20 minutes. ”

“ Potatoes are a laborious crop, requiring constant care, manuring, cutting the seed eyes (on which there is much uncertain lore) , hilling up or down according to drainage and rainfall, spraying with Pyrox or dusting with Paris green, and, neither least nor last, bug hunting.
The seed is expensive, but for your own use you may plant from whatever seed, otherwise wasted, may grow on the potato vine, on the tops of the plants. The crop will be small potatoes and all kinds of varieties, which won't sell in the market but which make each dinner a surprise party. ”

“ Thus grown, potatoes are of inferior quality, and the yield is not always satisfactory. Flavor, however, is seldom thought of by the hungry denizens of our cities, in their eagerness to get a taste of something fresh.
Market gardeners will find great benefit from the use of wood-ashes, lime, and the phosphates. Sprinkle superphosphate in the hill at the rate of two hundred pounds per acre; mix it slightly in the soil with an iron rake or potato-hook, then plant the seed. ”

“ Of its importance as an article of food it is impossible to speak too highly, and the dietetic value of the Potato appears to be always advancing. The known deficiency of flesh-forming constituents naturally associates this vegetable with meat of various kinds, poultry, game and fish, and in this proper association the root is probably capable of superseding all other vegetable foods, bread alone excepted. It is far from our intention to recommend abstention from Asparagus, Cauliflower, Peas, and Sea Kale, and to regard Potatoes as a sufficient substitute for these and other table delicacies ”

“ When new potatoes first come into season, and especially when you have new potatoes from your own garden, it will often be found that mixed with the ordinary ones there are many potatoes no bigger than a toy marble, and which are too small to be boiled and sent to table as an ordinary dish of new potatoes. Reserve all these little dwarf potatoes, wash them, and throw them for five or ten minutes into boiling water, drain them off and throw them into the potato soup whole. ”

“ Before inquiring whether the liberal covenant, in conjunction with the Auchness husbandry, will meet the emergency, we must look a little at your further illustrations of high farming. You seem, now, not so very confident of the propriety and prudence of devoting such a disproportionate extent to the culture of potatoes. It is notorious that the potato has been for many years the most uncertain and precarious of all crops; that again and again, in all kinds of soil, and under all kinds of treatment, it has utterly perished in the earth, and entailed a grievous loss upon the farmer. ”

“ They will not be mealy if they lie soaking in the water without boiling. They are more mealy to peel them as soon as tender, and then put back in the pot without any water, and set in a warm place where they will steam, with the lid of the pot off. Old and poor potatoes are best boiled till soft, then peeled and mashed fine, with a little salt, butter, and very little milk put in—then put into a dish, smoothed over with a knife, a little flour sprinkled over it, and put where it will brown. ”