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Poultry, Hashed
Cut the remains of cold fowl or duck into neat pieces; put the trimmings into a stewpan with a pint of stock, and let them stew. Cut an onion into very small pieces, melt an ounce of dripping and fry the onion in it a little; put in the pieces of fowl, season with salt and pepper; let them brown a little. Mix half an ounce of butter and half an ounce of flour together, add it to the poultry, pour in the stock gradually, and let all simmer gently for about half an hour. Take out the pieces, place them on a hot dish, moisten the liquor with a little more stock or water if too thick; let it boil up, add a squeeze of lemon, skim, and strain over the dish. Put sippets of toast round, and serve.
A Victorian way of turning yesterday's roast bird into a second dinner: the carcass and trimmings make the stock, the good meat is barely reheated in it. The whole thing works if you keep the two stages separate.
- The hinge: don't stew the meat for half an hourAlready-cooked fowl held at a simmer for thirty minutes goes stringy and dry. Build and simmer the sauce for that time, then slip the pieces in for five to eight minutes at the end, just to heat through.
- Trimmings and stockThe trimmings are skin, bones, wing tips and scraps. A pint here is 20 fl oz imperial, about 2 1/2 US cups; simmer them in it for 30-40 minutes and strain before use, or start from a good chicken stock if the carcass is gone.
- DrippingAn ounce of dripping is about 2 tablespoons of the fat set from the roasting tin. Butter or a neutral oil does the same job, though dripping carries more of the roast flavour.
- Beurre manié, not rouxBeurre manie, not roux -- Half an ounce each of butter and flour kneaded raw together is a beurre manie: about a tablespoon of butter and nearer two tablespoons of flour. It is whisked into hot liquid to thicken, so add the stock gradually and keep it moving or it will lump.
- Seasoning and the lemonCold roast poultry is usually already salted; taste the sauce before adding more. The squeeze of lemon goes in at the very end and is what stops the dish tasting like reheated leftovers.
- Skim, then strainFat from the dripping and the bird will rise once the sauce boils up. Skim it off before straining, otherwise the finished sauce sits greasy on the plate.
- SippetsSmall pieces of toast, cut as triangles or fingers, set or laid around the rim of the dish. Toast them dry so they hold up against the sauce.
- YieldThe remains of one roast chicken or duck with a pint of stock will serve two or three, with mashed potato or plain boiled rice.
Hashes of this kind were a staple of Victorian household economy; a roast bird was often expected to yield a hot joint, then a cold plate, then a hash. The word hash comes through French hacher, to chop, and in nineteenth-century English usage it generally meant cooked meat cut up and reheated in a made sauce. Sippets, the toast points set round the dish, are older still and appear in English cookery books long before this one.