[Sca-cooks] Potatoes Revisited - Longish

[Elise Fleming]

Greetings.  While working on another project I found three potato
recipes in John Murrell's 1621 _A Delightful Daily Exercise for
Ladies and Gentlewomen_.  They are for candies, not as used in stews
or as a plain vegetable.  The second seems quite easy to do...

#61. To make past of Potatoes.
Boyle your Potatoes very tender, pare them and picke out all the
blackes of them, put to every pound of them a graine of Muske, and
beate them in a stone morter very fine, then take as much refined
Sugar as the pulpe doth weigh, and boyle it to a candy height with
as much Rose-water as will desolve it, then put in the pulpe into
the boyling Sugar, let it boyle alwayes stirring it till it come
from the bottome of the posnet, then lay it on a sheete of glasse in
round cakes or in what fashion you please, and set it in a warme
Ouen or Stoue, and when it is candied on the top, then turne it on
the other side, and let it candy and in ten or twelve daies it will
be dry, then boxe it for your vse.

#62. To preserve Potatoes.
Take a pound of the clearest Potatoes, pare them and lay them in
faire water, a pound of clarified Sugar, cutting your Potatoes in
quarters and put them in the hotte Sugar, let them boyle the spae of
an houre very softly now and then turning them, then take them off
and let them stand till they be cold, then set them on, boyling them
another houre, then take them off, and betweene hot and cold, put
the vp for your vse.

#63. To dry Potatoes.
Take preserved Potatoes washing them or out of the sirrup with a
little warme water, then dry them in a faire cloath, then take as
much double refined Sugar as will cover them boyled to candy height
as will desolve it, then put your Potatoes into the boyling Sugar
and turne them with a spoone when you see the Sugar begin to candy
about the spoone, then take them vp and lay them vpon a sheete of
glasse, set them in a warme Ouen or Stoue till it be candied on the
top, then turne it on the other side to candy, and in ten or twelve
dayes it will be dry, then boxe it for your vse.

Alys Katharine