Turkey Hash
Cut up the meat very fine. Stew the bones in a little water, then stir into this water the meat, adding a large tablespoonful butter, a cup of cream, salt and pepper, a little chopped parsley, thyme or celery (or else a very few celery-seeds). Stew all together.--Mrs. R.
A leftovers dish with no quantities beyond the butter and cream, so read it as a method: bone stock, finely cut meat, enrichment, herbs. It scales to whatever turkey you have left.
- ProportionsFigure roughly 3-4 cups of finely cut cooked turkey to 1 cup of cream and 1 tablespoon butter. That serves four over toast, rice or waffles.
- Stewing the bones"A little water" means just enough to cover the broken-up carcass, an hour or so at a bare simmer, then strain. You want a concentrated cupful or two, not a big pot of thin stock.
- Cut, not shredded"Cut up the meat very fine" means knife work: meat chopped small and reasonably even. Shredded or food-processed turkey turns to paste once it stews in cream.
- Reheat, do not cookReheat, do not overcook -- The turkey is already cooked. The recipe says to stew it, but keep the pan at a bare simmer and give it five to ten minutes, just long enough for the cream to thicken slightly. Long stewing tends to dry out cooked breast meat.
- CreamUse heavy or whipping cream. Modern half-and-half and light cream have less fat and are more likely to break or curdle.
- Celery seed"A very few" is literal — a quarter teaspoon at most for the whole pan. Celery seed is far more assertive than chopped celery and turns bitter in quantity.
- ThickeningThe original relies on gelatin from the bones plus reduced cream. If your stock was weak, whisk the butter with an equal amount of flour and stir that in first, then add the liquid.
- Leftover safetyCooked turkey that has sat out at room temperature after dinner should not be salvaged this way. Meat refrigerated promptly and used within three or four days is fine.
Hash in this period was often a way of stretching the remains of a roast into a second dinner, and the turkey carcass was its most reliable raw material — bones for stock, scraps too small to slice, and the leftover dark meat. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and generally dated to the late 1870s, is a collection of contributed receipts from Virginia households, which is why so many entries end with an initial rather than a name. Note that nothing is fried and nothing is browned: this is the creamed, gently stewed line of hash, closer to what later cookbooks would call à la king or creamed turkey.