Free Regency Recipe: Mrs Austen’s Boiled Potatoes

what excellent boiled potatoes. Many years since I have had such an exemplary vegetable. To which of my fair cousins should I compliment the excellence of the cooking?"

Mr Collins
Pride & Prejudice
1813

A variation of this now-famous line from Austen's most popular novel appears in the 2005 film adaptation starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen.

    It's a mark of the wealth Mr Collins is to inherit that Mrs Bennett serves potatoes at her supper table. They were originally reserved as a dish for gentry. The Bennetts' may not have had 'savings', as is made clear in the novel, but they certainly had income. Longbourn was a profitable estate, and this dish at table for their guest (for whom Mrs Bennett held such hopes) is an indication of their gentility – but this wasn’t always the case when it came to potatoes. There was a time they indicated a family who could not afford flour.

    The Austens lived at Steventon from 1775-1802. Potatoes were grown there in Mrs Austen’s kitchen garden from 1773. It must be remembered that including these in the vegetable garden for regular consumption at the time was unusual. Remember that while Jane Austen lived there with her father, mother and sister until their removal to Bath, and the Steventon rectory was a largeish home with a pleasant situation, they were not considered well off. The Steventon rectory, for example, was not their home. It belonged to the church. When Mr Austen retired, the entire family had to move to Bath – leaving Mrs Austen’s precious garden behind.

    After the death of Mr Austen in 1805, the Austen ladies were kept in home, hearth – and yes, potatoes - through the goodwill of their male relations. While this is not unusual for the times, when Jane Austen wrote about the dependency of Regency-era women, and how this restricted their options, it’s my belief that she spoke from more than mere observation. She wrote from her keenly felt lived experience – which, in the late 1790s, may not have included bread.

Why didn’t they have bread?

There were unprecedented weather events even back then. Severe floods and cold snaps damaged the wheat harvests around that time.

    The historian W. M. Stern discusses the low wheat yield in 1794, followed by a worse crop in 1795, leading to a bread shortage in Britain. That these shortages had natural causes did nothing to calm the public. The year 1795 was marked by several riots caused by anger over food scarcity – including one I’m proud to call Revolt of the Housewives, due to the role of women in the disturbances.

    It was the women rioters who demanded – and achieved – the redistribution of available food stores among the English. They set fair prices for their ‘taken’ food and reimbursed the producers. In some cases, it appears the King’s soldiers were complicit. (One imagines they had families to feed as well.) 

    This civil unrest was as disturbing to the aristocracy, as it was to the rest of the populace – because of the belief that similar shortages had led to the French Revolution. The storming of the Bastille (1789) was only a half dozen years prior – and all the landed gentry in England knew what became of those landowners. About 16,000 people lost their heads in France between 1793 and 1794 – including of course the French royal family.

What does any of this have to do with potatoes?

Right – potatoes. 

    It was the grain shortage in 1794 that led to the popularity of the potato as an alternative staple of the British tea or supper table. It's said that Jane Austen's mother dug her own potatoes, even in her old age when she lived at Chawton with her daughters.

    Mrs Austen enjoyed her potatoes ‘dressed’ according to this recipe from Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery (1747):

Dressing Potatoes:

1. Boil them in as little water as you can, without burning your pan.
2. Cover the saucepan close, and when the potato skins begin to crack, they are boiled enough.
3. Drain the water out.
4. Let them stand covered for a minute or two.
5. Peel them, lay them in your plate, and pour melted butter over them.
6. Next, lay them on a griddle iron til they are browned and crisping - then send them to table.

I've varied the original Regency-era recipe a little for my modern oven:

Ingredients:

• 32 oz (900g or 2lbs) potatoes, peeled and cut in quarters.
• 3 tablespoons of melted butter
• 1-2 teaspoons of flour

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 218°C / 425°F
2. Place potatoes in a large sauce pan with enough water to just cover them.
3. Allow them to boil furiously over medium to high heat for 20 minutes, or until they are tender when
        stuck with a fork. Remove them and arrange on a baking sheet.
4. Melt the butter over a medium heat.
5. Whisk in the flour quickly and remove butter from heat. Do not allow this sauce to boil.
6. Pour the melted butter over the potatoes and bake them until they are brown and crispy
        (about 10-15 minutes).
Serves 4-6.

Let me know how you get on if you give these a try. You can find me at www.clyverose.com. 

All my Regency-era novels contain delights for foodies. See if you can find the herbed mushrooms in this one.

I'm currently researching the rioting housewives too - because women have been underestimated for far too long - don't you think?