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Spanish Potatoes
1 tablespoon minced onion
2 cups cold boiled potatoes,
2 tablespoons chopped green diced pepper
½ cup cold cooked ham,
2 tablespoons chopped pimiento
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons oil or drippings
½ teaspoon paprika
Fry the onion, pepper and pimiento in the fat until light brown, add the diced potatoes, the chopped ham and seasonings and cook until thoroughly heated through.
A hash of leftovers, built on cold boiled potatoes and a little cured ham. The ingredient column has run together in the original printing, so read it as: 1 tablespoon minced onion, 2 tablespoons chopped green pepper, 2 tablespoons chopped pimiento, 4 tablespoons oil or drippings, 2 cups cold boiled potatoes diced, ½ cup cold cooked ham, 1 teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon paprika.
- Cold potatoes are the pointPotatoes boiled the day before and thoroughly chilled hold their edges and brown; freshly cooked warm ones break down into paste in the pan. Boil them whole in their skins, cool completely, then peel and dice about ½ inch.
- DrippingsThe recipe leaves the fat open: 'oil or drippings'. Bacon or ham fat would carry the most flavour; olive oil suits the Spanish label; a neutral oil works but the result is flatter.
- PimientoIn 1900s American cooking this means the sweet red pepper sold canned or jarred, already roasted and peeled. A jar of roasted red peppers, drained and chopped, is the same thing. Do not substitute paprika a second time.
- "Cook until thoroughly heated through"That undersells it. Spread the potatoes in the fat, leave them alone over medium-high heat for four or five minutes until a crust forms, then turn and repeat. Constant stirring gives you hot mush.
- SaltA full teaspoon plus cured ham will be too much for most palates. Salt at the end, after tasting, since the ham varies.
- YieldTwo cups of potato serves two as a main dish with an egg on top, or four as a side.
Butterick's book belongs to the era when "Spanish" on an American recipe meant largely the presence of sweet peppers and pimiento, often with onion and paprika alongside; the same shorthand produced Spanish rice, Spanish omelet and Spanish sauce, dishes with little connection to Spanish cooking. Canned pimientos made the label possible: pimientos were at first imported from Spain, and domestic canning of the sweet red pepper grew up in the American South, Georgia in particular, in the early decades of the twentieth century, by which time the jars were within reach of ordinary pantries. The dish itself is a thrift recipe of the plainest kind, the sort of page a pattern company put in its household book because cold boiled potatoes and a scrap of ham needed accounting for, and paprika and pimiento turned them into something that could be given a name.