Chipped potatoes

In our family chipped or chippy potatoes are different from chips; as a child we didn’t often have chips at home and they would have been fried in dripping in those days. I remember have chips with fried egg for lunch, and maybe that was an economical meal when we were trying to save money. Economical, yes, just home-grown potatoes and eggs and dripping left over from other cooking, but tasty, very tasty!

Chipped potatoes were left over boiled potatoes, cut into chunks and fried and usually we would have them for breakfast. We try not to waste anything these days, but inevitably some things do go in the recycling bin, but in those days I think hardly anything at all would have been wasted. We didn’t have a fridge,let alone a freezer, so in the summer my mum must have had to be very careful and inventive. She would have gone on her bicycle to the local shops to buy meat as we needed it from Mr Farrow the butcher. No doubt she would have also bought bread, maybe from Maskell’s bakery or maybe from the little shop at the top of Victoria avenue, just by the Jolly Waterman on Mitcham’s Corner. Bread that went stale would be made into bread and butter pudding – but she never made bread pudding; that was something I didn’t come across until I was an adult living away from home – although her sister made it for her children.

To return to chipped potatoes, left over potatoes weren’t just fried; in the summer they would be served with cold meat such as ham, and tomatoes and spring onions, all home-grown. Potatoes eaten cold were given a good dollop of salad cream – we didn’t have mayonnaise in those days! Even today, my husband still prefers salad cream! salad cream was first introduced as a commercial product by Heinz in 1914, but a creamy dressing for salad is obviously an English idea going back centuries, and in fact Eliza Acton has a recipe:

• 2 or 3 cooked egg yolks
• 1 tsp mustard powder
• ½ tsp pepper or cayenne
• 3 tbsp oil
• 2 tbsp vinegar
• salt to taste

1. blend the yolks and seasoning to a paste
2. gradually add the oil and vinegar stirring very well
3. add other flavourings to taste, tarragon, finely minced shallot, chilli or cucumber vinegar, a little garlic, or something called Harvey’s sauce