Stewed Potatoes is a traditional Elizabethan recipe for what was a very new and expensive ingredient at the time, potatoes (sweet potatoes in fact). Note that the original sweet potatoes would have been the white rather than the orange-fleshed kind. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic Elizabethan version of Stewed Potatoes.
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Original Recipe
Stewed Potatoes (The Art of Cookery Refin'd and Augmented)
Boyle or roast your Potatoes very tender, and blanch [peel] them; cut them into thin slices, put them into a dish or stewing pan, put to them three or foure Pippins sliced thin, a good quantity of beaten Ginger and Cynamon, Verjuice, Sugar and Butter; stew these together an hour very softly; dish them being stewed enough, putting to them Butter and Verjuice beat together, and stick it full of green Sucket or Orrengado, or some such liquid sweet-meat; sippit it and scrape Sugar on it, and serve it up hot to the Table.
Modern Redaction
Note that the sweet potatoes in this dish were treated as a sweet dish and mixed with apples, before being baked with a spice and sugar topping. The dish was finished by garnishing with sweetmeats and served hot.
Ingredients:
700g sweet potatoes (or a waxy potato such as Charlotte)
450g tart cooking apple (such as Bramley)
Place the whole potatoes in an oven pre-heated to 200°C (400°F/Gas Mark 6) for 30 minutes (20 minutes if using smaller charlotte potatoes) then peel (if using sweet potatoes) and slice thinly. Peel and core the apples then slice these thinly as well.
Butter the base of a casserole dish and place a layer of the sliced apple onto this. Mix 3 tbsp of the sugar with the cinnamon, ginger and grated orange peel. Sprinkle a little of this over the apples and dot with and a few pieces of the chopped butter. Cover with a layer of sweet potatoes, sprinkle with the sugar mixture and butter and repeat until all the layers have been built up.
Finally, pour the vinegar over the top and sprinkle with the remaining sugar. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180°C (350°F/Gas Mark 4) for 40 minutes and serve immediately.
