Home › The Principles of Cookery › Potato Turnovers
Potato Turnovers
Mince finely the remains of cold roast meat--beef, mutton, veal, or ham. Take away the pieces of skin and gristle, season the mince highly with salt and cayenne, and add a small proportion of chopped pickles. Mash some cold boiled potatoes, and make them into a paste with a little flour and one or two beaten eggs. Dredge a little flour over this, and roll it out. Cut it into rounds the size of a saucer. Put a little of the mince upon one half of one of these rounds, and fold the other half over it like a turnover. Pinch the edges neatly, and make up the rest of the pastry in the same way. Fry the turnovers in hot fat till they are brightly browned. Drain them, and serve very hot. Time to fry, four or five minutes. Probable cost, 2d. each.
A leftovers dish with no quantities at all, which is typical of Cassell's — the proportions are left to judgement. The hinge is the potato paste: too wet and it will burst in the fat, too dry and it cracks when folded.
- Working proportionsFor about eight saucer-sized rounds, start with 1 lb (450 g) cold mashed potato, 3 oz (85 g) plain flour and one beaten egg, adding a second egg only if the mixture will not come together. Use floury potatoes mashed dry, with no milk or butter beaten in; a wet mash will need so much flour it turns leaden.
- Roll it coldChill the paste for half an hour before rolling. Potato dough is far softer than pastry and handles best cold, on a well-floured board, rolled to about a quarter-inch.
- "The size of a saucer"A tea saucer of the period is commonly around 5 inches across, which gives a substantial turnover, about two per person as a light supper.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe says only "hot fat." Aim for 350–375°F (175–190°C): below that the potato absorbs grease, above it the outside browns before the filling heats through. Four to five minutes at that heat is accurate.
- Shallow or deepHalf an inch of fat in a heavy pan works as well as a deep fryer, turning once. Lift with a slotted spoon rather than tongs, which tend to split the seam.
- The minceChop rather than process the meat; a food processor turns cold roast beef to paste. Seasoning 'highly' with salt and cayenne means noticeably hot by modern standards: a good pinch, not a dusting. The chopped pickles should be squeezed dry or they will wet the filling.
- Reheating cooked meatThe cold roast should have been refrigerated promptly and used within two or three days. Because the filling only has four or five minutes in the pan, mince it small so the centre genuinely comes up to temperature.
- SealingBrush the edge with beaten egg or water before folding and press firmly with a fork; a leaking turnover will spit badly in the fat.
Cassell's belongs to the great age of English "réchauffés" — dishes built from the remains of yesterday's joint, which in households that roasted a large piece of meat was likely a constant practical problem rather than an economy fad. The book's habit of quoting a probable cost, here twopence each, suggests a manual for readers cooking to a budget. Potato pastry of this kind, bound with egg and just enough flour to hold, appears across nineteenth-century British and Irish cookery under various names and is a close cousin of the fried potato cake and the Cornish-style savoury turnover; it uses up two leftovers at once, the cold meat and the cold boiled potatoes that any Victorian kitchen produced in quantity. The high seasoning with cayenne and chopped pickle is standard for reheated meat, whose flavour was often said to flatten on standing.