Have the potatoes boiled and not broken. Cut into dice some fat bacon. Put a piece of butter into a small enamelled frying pan and when melted put the bacon fat into it and let it brown slightly. Pour over the potatoes in the dish and serve at once. This is a good way to serve potatoes with cold meat.
145. Potato Croquettes
Have ready about two or three breakfast-cups of nicely mashed potato. Form into either small round cakes or sausage-shaped ones. Roll in a plate of well-beaten egg and some fine crumbs made from rolled rusk crumbs; fry a light brown in some good dripping or lard, and serve piled up in a dish, garnished with a little fresh parsley.
146. Baked Potatoes
Cut your peeled potatoes in four pieces lengthwise. Melt in a baking tin half a pound of beef or veal dripping (mutton dripping will not do) on the top of the stove, and when boiling put the potatoes into it. Turn them once and only then sprinkle with a little salt. Place in a brisk oven and bake for twenty minutes or half an hour. Dish with a slice.
147. Green Peas
Put into a saucepan of boiling water half a vegetable dish of green peas. Add two lumps of loaf sugar, a small sprig of mint, a pinch of soda, and a flat teaspoonful of salt. Young peas should cook from twenty to thirty minutes over a clear fire with the saucepan lid off. Strain through a cullender and when dished sprinkle with a good dessertspoonful of powdered sugar; add a piece of butter about the size of a walnut and turn over with a spoon several times before serving.
Bottled peas treated in this manner very closely resemble fresh peas. They must be washed in three waters before cooking.
148. Scarlet Runner and Broad Beans
Have four pounds of beans, trim them all round with a knife to remove all the string and cut them lengthwise into thin slices. Do not put them into cold water. Have ready the saucepan three parts full of boiling water. Put in the beans with a little salt and a tiny piece of soda. Boil for twenty minutes if the beans are young and a little longer if they are not quite fresh. Strain into a cullender then into a vegetable dish.