Camp cookery (Kephart)

Potatoes, Mashed. — After boiling, mash the potatoes with a peeled stub of sapling, or a bottle, and work into them some butter, if you have it, and milk. "The more you beat 'em, the better they be." Salt and pepper. Potato Cakes. — Mould some mashed potato into cakes, season, and fry in deep fat. Or add egg and bake them brown. Potatoes, Baked. — Nessmuk's description cannot be improved: "Scoop out a basin-like depression under the fore-stick, three or four inches deep, and large enough to hold the tubers when laid side by side ; fill • it with bright hardwood coals ^nd keep up a strong heat for half an hour or more. Next, clean out the hollow, place the potatoes in it, and cover them with hot sand or ashes, top23ed with a heap of glowing coals, and keep up all the heat you like. In about forty minutes commence to try them with a sharpened hardwood sliver; when this will pass through them they are done and should be raked out at once. Run the sliver through them from end to end, to let the steam escape^ and use immediately, as a roast potato quickly becomes soggy and bitter." Potatoes, Fried. — Boiled or steamed potatoes that have been left over may be sliced one-quarter inch thick, and fried. Potatoes, Fried, Raw, — Peel, and slice into pieces half an inch thick. Drop into cold water until frying-pan is ready. Put enough grease in pan to completely immerse the potatoes, and get it very hot, as directed under Frying. Pour water off potatoes, dry a slice in a clean cloth, drop it into the sizzling fat, and so on, one slice at a time. Drying the slices avoids a splutter in the pan and helps to keep from absorbing grease. If many slices were dropped into the pan together, the heat would be checked and the potatoes would get soggy with grease. When the slices begin to turn a faint brown, salt the potatoes, pour off the grease at once, and brown a little in the dry pan. The outside of each slice will then be crisp and the insides white and deliciously mealy. Potatoes, Lyonnaise. — Fry one or more sliced onions until they are turning yellowish, then add sliced potatoes, previously boiled or steamed; keep tossing now and then until the potatoes are fried somewhat yellow; salt to taste. Potatoes, Stewed. — Cut cold boiled potatoes into dice, season with salt, pepper, butter, and stew gently in enough milk to cover them. Stir occasionally to prevent scorching. Or peel and slice some raw potatoes. Cover with boiling water and boil until tender. Pour off the water. Roll a large piece of butter in flour, heat some milk, beat these together until smooth, season with salt and pepper, and bring to a boil. Then stew together five minutes. jServe very hot. Sweet Potatoes, Boiled. — Use a kettle with lid. Select tubers of uniform size; wash; do not cut or break the skins. Put them in boiling water, and continue boiling until, when you pierce one with a fork, you find it just a little hard in the center. Drain by raising the cover only a trifle when kettle is tilted, so as to keep in as much steam as possible. Hang the kettle high over the fire, cover closely, and let steam ten minutes. Sweet Potatoes, Fried. — Skin the boiled potatoes and cut them lengthwise. Dust the slices with salt and pepper. Throw them into hot fat, browning first one side, then the other. Serve very hot.