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Left - Overs of Meat, Fish, Etc: Salt
HASH, CREOLE STYLE 1 slice of onion 3/4 cup of cold, boiled potatoes 1/4 green or red pepper (in cubes) 2 tablespoonfuls of butter 1/2 cup of broth 1 cup of cooked meat (in 1/4 cup of tomato puree cubes) Salt as needed.
Chop the onion and pepper very fine. Melt the butter in a hot frying pan (agate preferred) and in it cook the onion and pepper until they are softened; then add the meat and potato, both cut in tiny cubes; mix thoroughly, then add the broth and puree; mix again and set into the oven until hot throughout. HASHED LAMB, WITH RICE AND PEAS About 1 cup of chopped lamb Salt, black pepper, butter Broth, salt and pepper 1/2 teaspoonful sugar for canned 1/2 cup of hot boiled rice peas 1/2 can or 1 cup fresh peas Remove all unedible portions from the meat before chopping. To the meat add broth and seasonings and let become very hot. Season the hot peas with salt and black pepper; add one or two tablespoonfuls of butter and, if canned peas are used, the sugar. Have all very hot. Dispose the meat in a mound in the center of a hot platter; surround with the hot rice and in turn surround this with the peas. Serve at once.
Two ways to stretch a cup of leftover roast, both built for a two-person household. Neither needs a written yield: each serves two, generously.
- The two-column ingredient listsBoth lists were set in two columns and read across the page rather than down. In the hash, the items are: 1 slice of onion, 1/4 green or red pepper in cubes, 2 tablespoons butter, 1 cup cooked meat in cubes, 3/4 cup cold boiled potatoes, 1/2 cup broth, 1/4 cup tomato puree, salt. In the lamb dish: about 1 cup chopped lamb, broth, salt and pepper, butter, 1/2 cup hot boiled rice, 1/2 can or 1 cup fresh peas, and 1/2 teaspoon sugar if the peas are canned.
- Agate pans"Agate" is enamelled sheet steel, popular around 1900 because it did not react with tomato or vinegar. Any non-reactive pan does the same job; avoid bare cast iron with the tomato puree.
- Oven heat for the hashNo temperature is given because the dish only needs to be heated through, not baked. A moderate oven and a few minutes will do; the pan goes in as it is, so use one with an ovenproof handle.
- Cut size is the hingeBoth meat and potato are specified in tiny cubes, and that is what makes this hash cohere rather than fall apart on the fork. A quarter-inch dice is about right; do not shred or grind the meat.
- BrothBoth recipes call for broth without specifying a kind. Any unsalted or lightly salted stock works, but salt at the end, since reduced commercial broth can carry the dish past seasoning on its own.
- "Unedible portions"For the lamb this means gristle, tough outer skin from a roast, and hard fat, all of which chop badly and turn waxy when reheated. Trim before chopping, not after.
- Canned peas and the sugarThe half teaspoon of sugar compensates for the flat, starchy taste of the period's canned peas. With frozen peas, which are picked and blanched young, leave it out and simply heat them through with butter for a minute or two.
- AssemblyThe lamb dish is served composed rather than stirred together: meat mounded, rice ringed around it, peas outside that. Warm the platter, or the arrangement is lukewarm by the time it reaches the table.
Cookbooks written for small households leaned hard on the second appearance of a roast, and this pair shows the two standard strategies: chop everything small and bind it with liquid, or keep the components separate and dress the plate. The "Creole style" label here seems to do what such labels often did in American books outside Louisiana, signalling little more than onion, sweet pepper and tomato cooked in butter, a shorthand borrowed from New Orleans cooking rather than a claim to it. The lamb dish, with its ring of rice and border of peas, reflects the era's habit of presenting even a leftover as a composed platter, and the note about sugar for canned peas is a quiet record of how much the tinned vegetable of the period differed from what came out of the garden.