Countdown to Thanksgiving, Day 6: Spuds- the Mighty Meal Maker

The 19th century dinner was incomplete without potatoes. They enjoyed their rice heartily and every housewife and chef had a noodle recipe, but a meal without potatoes was just... well, it just isn't done, Dear!

Miss Leslie advises, in her 1848 work The Lady's Receipt Book,
*There is no necessity for repeating the mention of potatoes. It will of course be understood that potatoes should constitute a portion of every dinner.

 A look at the options for potatoes include so many of our classic preparations: baked, roasted, sliced and fried, grated and fried (recommended for breakfast), and mashed with butter and cream. The usual spices include butter, salt, and pepper.
They also include a few preparations that take the modern reader by surprise.

From: The Presbyterian Cookbook by First Presbyterian Church of Dayton Ohio, 1877
Potato Pie.
Mrs. Lucy Green.
Scald one quart of milk; grate in four large potatoes, and four ounces of butter, while the milk is hot. When cold, add four eggs well beaten; spice and sweeten to your taste; bake with under crust.

Chantilly Potatoes with Parmesan Crust by Maria Guarnaschelli 

If you prefer a savory pudding...
From: The Housekeeper's Assistant by Ann Allen, 1845
Baked Potato Pudding.
12 oz. of boiled potato skinned and mashed,
1 oz. of suet,
1 oz. of cheese grated fine,
1 gill of milk.
Mix the potatoes, suet, milk, cheese, and all together; if not of a proper consistence, add a little water. Bake it in an earthen pan.

...or if you prefer a sweet pudding...

From: Directions for Cookery by Eliza Leslie, 1840
Potato Pudding.
 --Boil a pound of fine potatoes, peel them, mash them, and rub them through a cullender. Stir together to a cream, three quarters of a pound of sugar and the same quantity of butter. Add to them gradually, a wine glass of rose water, a glass of wine, and a glass of brandy; a tea-spoonful of powdered mace and cinnamon, a grated nutmeg, and the juice and grated peel of a large lemon. Then beat six eggs very light, and add them by degrees to the mixture, alternately with the potato. Bake it three quarters of an hour in a buttered dish.

In one of the earliest cookbooks featuring uniquely American foods, the recipe for Potato Pudding will work equally well for Yams, Sweet Potatoes, Pumpkin, Crookneck Squash, and Winter Squash.

From: American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, 1798
A Crookneck, or Winter Squash Pudding.
Core, boil and skin a good squash, and bruize it well; take 6 large apples, pared, cored, and stewed tender, mix together; add 6 or 7 spoonsful of dry bread or biscuit, rendered fine as meal, half pint milk or cream, 2 spoons of rose-water, 2 do. wine, 5 or 6 eggs, beaten and strained, nutmeg, salt and sugar to your taste, one spoon flour, beat all smartly together, bake.
The above is a good receipt for Pompkins, Potatoes or Yams, adding more moistening or milk and rose water, and to the two latter a few black or Lisbon currants, or dry whortleberries scattered in, will make it better.

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Potato's sweeter cousin, sweet potatoes and yams are returning to the historic preparations in the modern search for lighter preparations. Sweet Potatoes truly embody the "everything old is new again."

From: Miss Beecher's Domestic Receipt Book by Catherine Esther Beecher, 1850
Sweet Potatoes.
The best way to cook sweet potatoes is to bake them with their skins on. When boiled, the largest should be put in first, so as to have all cook alike. Drain them and dry them, then peel them. They are excellent sliced and fried for breakfast next day; much better than at first.

Sweet Potato "Fries" by Ina Garten of Barefoot Contessa