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Chopped Potatoes
Place in the frying-pan two teaspoons of beef suet or drippings, and the same quantity of butter. Chop five medium-sized cold boiled potatoes in a chopping bowl until the pieces measure about one-half inch, and add them to the fat when it is very hot. Season with salt and pepper, and stir vigorously until the potatoes look yellow and are cooking well; then cover the pan, set it in a slow heat and serve in five minutes.
A plain fried-potato dish that depends entirely on the potatoes being cooked the day before and thoroughly cold. Everything else is a matter of heat management.
- The hinge: cold potatoesWarm or freshly boiled potatoes shed starch and collapse into mush the moment they hit fat. Boil them the day before, refrigerate, and chop them straight from the cold.
- Chopping, not dicingThe chopping bowl gives irregular half-inch pieces with torn faces that brown better than knife-cut cubes. A bowl and curved chopper, or rough chopping with a large knife, does the same work; a food processor tends to overwork them into a gummy mash.
- Quantity of fatTwo teaspoons suet plus two teaspoons butter is 4 teaspoons in all, about 1 1/3 tablespoons for five potatoes, which is lean by modern habit. Expect to use 2 to 3 tablespoons in a modern pan unless it is well seasoned or nonstick.
- Beef suet and drippingsSuet is the hard kidney fat, sold at butchers and rendered before use. Rendered beef drippings, lard, or clarified butter all work; the butter is there for flavour and will brown, so add it with the beef fat rather than alone.
- "Very hot" fatThe fat should shimmer and a test piece should sizzle immediately. Potatoes added to lukewarm fat absorb it and steam instead of crusting.
- "Slow heat" for the finishAfter the initial vigorous stirring, drop to low, cover, and leave the potatoes alone for five minutes. The trapped steam finishes the interiors and the bottom sets into a crust; stirring during this stage undoes it.
- Pan choiceCast iron or heavy carbon steel, about 10 inches, holds the heat needed when the cold potatoes go in. A thin pan will drop temperature and the potatoes will stick without browning.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Five medium potatoes would reasonably serve three to four as a side dish, or two at breakfast.
This is the frugal end of the repertoire: a way of using up boiled potatoes left from an earlier meal. Butterick's cook book appeared in the early twentieth century from the pattern company best known for dress patterns, and it treats beef suet and drippings as ordinary kitchen fats rather than as specialty items. Chopped, hashed and "lyonnaise" potatoes all belong to the same family of second-day dishes, distinguished mainly by whether onion is added and how finely the potato is cut; the chopping bowl called for here was standard equipment long before the food processor, used for hash, mincemeat and suet alike.