5. A use for potatoes of which Mrs. Beeton may have approved
Doing laundry was a bit less convenient for the housewife of the past; it was often set aside for a single day of the week, as were other housekeeping chores. She also had to deal with mud to a greater degree than today; roads and streets were often unpaved and passing carriages sprayed mud from their fender-free wheels. Placing clothes soiled with mud and stains from mud in the wash tub left her to wash water muddy, rendering it useless for the rest of her laundry. Either she could change the water and the expensive soap it contained, or she could devise a means of cleaning mud stains from garments before they entered the tub.
If she chose the latter, she could prepare the clothes for laundering – today it would be called pretreating – by rubbing the mud-stained garments with peeled whole potatoes. The potatoes were raw, and when they became too muddy they were simply rinsed with fresh water. When the potatoes could be rubbed across the stains without extracting any more mud the clothes were ready for immersion in the wash water. The rest of the washing was thus protected from being exposed to the mud, and the potatoes were simply thrown away.