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Left - Overs of Meat, Fish, Etc
IN families of two, it is often advisable, even during the summer, to prepare enough of certain articles of food for two or more meals at one and the same time; but, in general, the best results are obtained, both as regards palatability and digestibility, if just enough of each article be prepared for the meal and no more. Why bake three potatoes when only two are eaten? Why buy and cook six chops when four are just enough, and hot chops are more palatable and wholesome than cold ones? Plan to have every-thing so perfect that every morsel will be eaten, and nothing thrown away. If vegetables be left over and are to be used in salads, wait until the heat has left them, then cover securely, and plan for an early reappearance on the table. Serve cold meat cut in thin slivers; and, if made dishes are attempted, discard religiously all skin and gristle. Apply heat indirectly, by means of hot sauces and the like, lest strong heat impair the digestibility of the finished product. CORNED BEEF HASH Have ready an equal bulk of cold, corned beef and cold, boiled potatoes, chopped fine, and a hot fryingpan with two or three tablespoonfuls of straw-colored bacon fat. Turn in the meat and potatoes, add from three tablespoonfuls to a cup of broth, according to the quantity of hash, cover, and let become hot. Stir to mix thoroughly, make smooth in the pan, cover, and let stand, to crust over slightly next the pan. Roll as an omelet, and turn on to a hot platter. Garnish with slices of lemon and pickled beet. Two or three slices of cold crisped bacon if at hand may be chopped with the meat and potato.
The headnote is a small essay on portioning for a two-person household; the hash that follows is a complete recipe and works exactly as written. A few notes on quantities and technique.
- QuantitiesThe recipe gives proportions rather than amounts: equal volumes of chopped corned beef and boiled potato, with broth anywhere from three tablespoonfuls to a cup depending on the batch. About a cup of each, with broth at the low end of that range, makes a small panful; the recipe itself names no pan size and no number of servings.
- "Straw-colored bacon fat"This means fat rendered gently so it stays pale gold, not browned. Save the drippings from breakfast bacon before they darken, or use any neutral fat with a spoonful of bacon fat for flavor.
- Chop, don't grind or cubeBoth meat and potato are chopped fine with a knife so the mass binds against itself. A food processor turns corned beef to paste and the hash will not crust.
- Cold potatoes matterBoiled potatoes cooked the day before and thoroughly chilled hold their shape and release less starch. Freshly boiled hot potatoes go gluey in the pan.
- The hinge: leave it aloneAfter the mixture is mixed, smoothed, and covered, resist stirring. The crust forms only if the underside sits undisturbed against the pan. The recipe gives no cooking time and no heat level, only the instruction to let it stand until it crusts slightly.
- Broth to tasteThe range given "from three tablespoonfuls to a cup" scales with the batch. Add just enough to moisten; a wet hash steams instead of crusting.
- Rolling it out"Roll as an omelet" means folding the crusted cake over on itself with a spatula as you slide it onto the platter. If it breaks, serve it in pieces, crust side up.
- SeasoningNo salt is called for, and none should be added until you have tasted; corned beef is salty, and if the broth used is the beef's own cooking liquid it will be saltier still. The recipe does not specify which broth. Pepper is worth adding.
- The garnishLemon and pickled beet are not decoration only, the acid cuts the fat. Any sharp pickle serves the same purpose.
The recipe is generally attributed to Cooking for Two, one of a wave of early twentieth-century American cookbooks aimed at the small household, a genuinely new market as young couples set up in apartments. The advice here to cook exactly two potatoes reads as a contrast to the older tradition of the large family kitchen where a joint fed the household for days. Corned beef hash itself is a product of that older economy: beef preserved in coarse "corns" of salt was a staple of ships, armies and cold-climate households, and boiling a piece of it yielded both a hot dinner and the cold remnant that became hash. The instruction to apply heat indirectly and to discard skin and gristle reflects the period's intense interest in digestibility, a concern that ran through domestic-science writing of the era and was often argued with more confidence than evidence.