Cassa Rolls
Boil some Irish potatoes until quite done, mash them smooth and add an equal quantity of salt meat chopped fine. Mix with this several well beaten eggs, one spoonful butter, some pepper and salt.
Bake in little cakes like potato cakes.--Mrs. F. D.
A thrift dish with no measurements at all, so the proportions are yours to set. The one thing worth getting right is the salt: the meat brings all of it, and the potatoes need none until you have tasted the mixture.
- Working quantityTwo cups of mashed potato to two cups of finely chopped salt meat, bound with three beaten eggs (the recipe says "several") and a tablespoon of butter, gives about a dozen cakes. "Equal quantity" is most easily read as volume, though the recipe does not say.
- Salt meatThis means home-cured salt pork, corned beef or ham from the barrel, all of it far saltier than what a supermarket sells. Modern salt pork or thick-cut bacon should be simmered in fresh water for 10 minutes and drained before chopping; leftover boiled corned beef or country ham works with no soaking at all. Add salt only at the end, after tasting.
- Irish potatoesSimply ordinary white potatoes, distinguished in nineteenth-century Southern books from sweet potatoes, which were common enough that the qualifier "Irish" was needed. Use a starchy russet and mash it dry, without milk, or the cakes will not hold together.
- "One spoonful butter"Usually a tablespoon in books of this period, though the measure is not fixed; it is there for richness rather than structure. The eggs do the binding.
- Baking temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature. A greased tin in a moderate oven, around 375-400F, for twenty to twenty-five minutes, turning the cakes once, gives browning on both faces.
- Pan-frying instead"Little cakes like potato cakes" describes a form that was also cooked on a griddle, and a shallow layer of hot fat gives a better crust than the oven does, though the recipe says bake. Three or four minutes a side over medium heat.
- Chilling the mixtureMash and meat mixed while hot will slump. Cool the mixture thoroughly, or refrigerate it for half an hour, before shaping.
- ServingProbably a breakfast or supper dish rather than a side, though the recipe does not say. Twelve cakes serve four, with eggs or a sharp pickle to cut the salt.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named and initialed Virginia housewives, is full of short entries like this one: a way to use up cold boiled salt meat and leftover mashed potato without any pretense of being a formal dish. The title is puzzling and remains unexplained, and the attribution to Mrs. F. D. gives no further clue. What it does show plainly is the postwar Southern kitchen's economy: salt-cured pork was the year-round protein, potatoes the year-round bulk, and eggs the binder that turned yesterday's remnants into something that could be sent to table hot.