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Gravy for Hashes, Cheap
Divide into small pieces the bones and trimmings of the meat to be hashed, and put them into a saucepan, with as much cold water as will cover them, and to every pint and a half of water add six berries of allspice, six peppercorns, half a tea-spoonful of pounded celeryseed, tied in muslin, a small bundle of savoury herbs, half a salt-spoonful of salt, and half a slice of bread, toasted on both sides till it is brown and hard, but not burnt. Cover the saucepan closely, and simmer gently for an hour. Cut a good-sized onion into thin slices, and put them into a saucepan with a piece of butter the size of a walnut. Let them remain over the fire till brightly browned, moving them about to prevent them burning. Mix in very smoothly as much flour as will make a stiff batter, and add gradually the gravy made from the bones and trimmings. Boil gently for a few minutes, to take off the raw taste of the flour, strain it through a coarse sieve, and it is ready for the hash, which, it is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to say, must not be boiled in it, but only well heated. The gravy is improved by the addition of a table-spoonful of mushroom or walnut ketchup, or Harvey's sauce, or finely-minced pickles. Probable cost, 4d., exclusive of the bones, etc. Sufficient for a pint and a quarter of gravy. Instead of thickening in the way described above, two dessert-spoonfuls of flour, a tea-spoonful of anchovy sauce, and about half a tea-spoonful of made mustard may be mixed smoothly with a little water stirred into the gravy, which should then be stewed gently twenty minutes longer.
A bones-and-trimmings gravy of the sort that made Monday's cold joint into a hot dinner. Most of the work is unattended simmering; the only real skill is browning the onion and flour without scorching either.
- The hinge: do not boil the hashThe recipe says it almost in passing, but it is the whole point. Already-cooked meat sliced into simmering gravy toughens and shreds within minutes. Bring the gravy to a bare steam, add the meat, and hold it just below a simmer until heated through, five minutes at most.
- Archaic measuresA salt-spoonful is about a quarter teaspoon, so the seasoning here is deliberately light. "A piece of butter the size of a walnut" is usually reckoned at about 1 oz, or 2 tablespoons. The finished quantity, a pint and a quarter, is 25 imperial fluid ounces, roughly 3 US cups -- enough to sauce a hash for several.
- The flour is not specified"As much flour as will make a stiff batter" with 2 tablespoons of butter and an onion's worth of moisture works out to somewhere near 2 tablespoons. The alternative method at the end gives two dessert-spoonfuls, about 2 teaspoons each, so a scant 1 1/2 tablespoons for the same volume of liquid — a thinner gravy.
- The toast is a colouring agentHalf a slice browned hard on both sides gives the stock colour and a faint roasted bitterness, standing in for the browning that roasting the bones would have supplied. It must be brown, not black; burnt toast turns the whole pot acrid, which is why the instruction is so emphatic.
- Brown the onion properly"Brightly browned" means genuinely coloured, not softened -- reckon on eight to twelve minutes over medium heat, stirred often. Along with the toast it is the main source of depth in an unroasted-bone stock, so pale onions give a thin, floury result.
- Vanished condimentsHarvey's sauce was a sharp, anchovy-based bottled seasoning and is no longer on shop shelves; walnut ketchup, made from green walnuts with vinegar and spices (anchovy in some recipes), is now hard to find. Worcestershire sauce is the closest surviving relative of Harvey's; mushroom ketchup is still made by a few British firms. A teaspoon of any of them, or the anchovy sauce and mustard of the second method, supplies the salt and savour the light seasoning leaves out.
- StrainingA coarse sieve is right — you want the onion pulp out but not the body. Remove the muslin bag of celery seed and the herb bundle first, and press the solids lightly rather than forcing them through.
- Bones make the differenceRaw or lightly roasted bones with meat and gristle still attached give a gravy with real body; picked-clean cooked bones give little. An hour is short for stock, so start with as much trimming and skin as you have.
This entry is really an exercise in thrift: the priced note, "4d., exclusive of the bones," is the point of it. Victorian household cookery was organised around the large roasted joint, and the second and third appearances of that joint eled led led — hashed, minced, rissoled — depended on a gravy built from its own bones, since the meat itself had given up most of its juices at the first meal. Toasted bread as a colouring for stock is an old English trick, standing in for the browned-flour roux of French practice and for the commercial browning powders that middle-class cooks were often warned against as adulterated. The two bottled sauces named here, walnut ketchup and Harvey's sauce, were both nineteenth-century staples of the store cupboard, umami in a bottle at a time when the word did not exist; both would have been at hand for exactly this purpose, propping up a stock made in an hour from the remains of Sunday.