Hash
One and one-half teacup of boiling water must be poured into a saucepan, mix one heaping spoonful flour with one tablespoonful cold water, stir it in and boil three minutes. Then add two teaspoonfuls salt, half a small teaspoonful pepper, and butter size of an egg.
After removing all tough, gristly pieces from the cold cooked meat, chop it fine with some boiled potatoes. Put them in the dressing, heat through, then serve. It injures meat to cook it again, making it hard and unpalatable. Should you have any cold gravy left, use it; in that case you will require less butter, salt and pepper. You can serve it with buttered toast underneath, or you may set it into the oven to brown on top, or drop eggs into a skillet of boiling salt water, and when cooked, place on top of hash.--Mrs. J.
A straightforward gravy-bound hash from cold roast leftovers. The one thing to hold onto is the author's own warning: the meat is already cooked, so it only wants heating through.
- Teacup and spoon measuresA teacup in this period runs about 3/4 cup, so 1 1/2 teacups is roughly 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons of water. "Butter size of an egg" is about 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons.
- SaltTwo teaspoons of salt for about a cup of liquid is heavy by modern taste, and cold roast meat is already seasoned. Start with half and correct at the end.
- The hingeGet the sauce fully thickened and seasoned before the meat goes in, then fold the meat and potato through and heat just until steaming. Simmering chopped cooked beef reduces it to dry fibre, which is exactly what the note about injuring the meat is about.
- The roux that isn'tThe flour is slaked in cold water and stirred into boiling water rather than cooked in fat. The three minutes of boiling gives the starch time to thicken and lose its raw taste; whisk while it goes in or it will lump.
- ProportionsNo quantity of meat is given. About 2 cups chopped cooked meat to 1 cup chopped boiled potato suits this amount of sauce and feeds three or four; a looser hash wants more sauce, a browned one less.
- Using leftover gravyIf you substitute cold gravy for some of the water, it is already thickened and salted, so cut the flour as well as the butter and seasoning the recipe mentions.
- Browning in the ovenFor the browned version, spread it in a shallow buttered dish and put it under a broiler or in a hot oven, 425F, only long enough to set a crust on top.
- The eggs"Drop eggs into a skillet of boiling salt water" means poached eggs. Barely simmering water gives a better shape than a full boil, and three to four minutes leaves the yolk soft.
Hash is the household economy dish in its purest form, and its name comes from the French hacher, to chop. In a dish like this the skill lay in binding cold meat with a sauce well enough that it did not taste like reheating. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, is full of such attributions to "Mrs. J." and similar initials, which is part of why the book reads as a record of how particular kitchens actually ran. The insistence that recooking meat makes it "hard and unpalatable" reflects a period when a large roast was the center of several successive meals, and three finishes are suggested here -- on toast, browned in the oven, or crowned with a poached egg.