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Mince with Potatoes
Chop fine any cold meat; parboil enough Irish potatoes to be two-thirds as many as there is chopped meat. Mix all together with one raw egg, one onion, black pepper, and salt.
Fry with butter, either in large or small cakes in a pan, the cakes rather larger than sausages. If you have cold ham, it is an advantage to add some of it to the mince; and the whole is very nice made of cold pickled beef.-Mrs. C.
A leftovers hash bound with egg and shaped into cakes. The only real technical demand is getting the potato-to-meat ratio and the moisture right, so the cakes hold together in the pan.
- "Irish potatoes"In Virginia cookbooks of this era "Irish potato" distinguishes the ordinary white potato from the sweet potato. Any waxy or all-purpose potato works; russets will crumble more.
- ProportionsThe measure appears to be by bulk of the chopped ingredients rather than weight: potato equal to about two-thirds the bulk of the meat. For roughly 2 cups of finely chopped cooked meat, that is about 1 1/3 cups diced parboiled potato.
- Parboil, not soft-boilBoil the potatoes only until a knife meets slight resistance, around 8-10 minutes for a 1/2-inch dice, then drain and let them steam dry. Fully cooked potato turns the mixture to paste and the cakes will slump in the pan.
- The egg is the whole binderOne egg for this quantity is minimal, so the mix must be dry and cold before shaping. Chill the formed cakes 20-30 minutes if they feel loose; a spoonful of flour or dry breadcrumbs is a fair addition if the meat was juicy.
- OnionOne raw onion, chopped fine, will not soften fully in the short fry of a small cake. Sweating it in butter first gives a better result unless you want the bite.
- FryingMedium heat in butter, about 4-5 minutes a side. The recipe allows either large or small cakes, the smaller ones "rather larger than sausages". Butter alone browns fast; a little neutral oil with it keeps the milk solids from burning before the cakes set.
- Cold pickled beefThis means home-corned beef from the brine barrel. Deli corned beef or leftover braised brisket both stand in, but taste before salting the mixture.
- YieldAbout eight cakes from 2 cups of meat, serving three or four as a main dish with a fried egg or a sharp pickle.
Recipes like this are the working engine of a nineteenth-century household kitchen: a joint was roasted or a beef pickled in brine, and what came off it cold on the second and third days had to be made into something that looked like a dish rather than remains. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Southern housekeepers, many identified only by initials — here \"Mrs. C.\" — is full of these, and the ham-and-mince suggestion is characteristic of a region where a cured ham was always somewhere in the larder to lend salt and smoke to blander meat. The mixture is a close cousin of English rissoles and of American red flannel and corned beef hash, shaped into small cakes \"rather larger than sausages.\"