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Hashed Browned Potatoes
Place a tablespoon of butter in a frying-pan and when hot add cold, boiled, finely chopped potatoes to the depth of one inch. Usually four good-sized potatoes will be sufficient. When chopping them add one teaspoon of salt and a dash of pepper. Press the potato down in the pan, packing it firmly with a limber knife. Cook slowly for six or seven minutes, when the potato should be brown. Do not stir it. Now begin at one side of the pan, and fold the potato over on the other like an omelet, packing it closely together. Turn it upside down on the serving platter, when ready to serve.
A straightforward skillet method from 1911 that treats hashed browns as a folded cake rather than loose fried bits. Two things carry it: genuinely cold potatoes and a pan you do not touch.
- Do not stirThe instruction is the whole recipe. The crust forms only where potato sits undisturbed against hot metal; stirring breaks it and steams the potato instead. Leave the pan alone for the full six or seven minutes.
- Cold potatoes matterBoiled and thoroughly chilled potatoes, ideally cooked the day before, hold their shape when chopped. Warm ones turn gluey under the knife and the cake will not hold together when folded.
- "A limber knife"A thin, flexible blade, used flat to press the potato into an even layer. A wide offset spatula does the same job now, and is better for the fold.
- One tablespoon of butter is leanIn a cast-iron or heavy steel pan expect to need two to three tablespoons for four potatoes, or the layer will stick before it browns. Butter alone browns fast at this depth; a little neutral oil with it gives more room for error.
- Pan sizeThe recipe wants a one-inch depth, which puts four good-sized potatoes in about a 9- to 10-inch pan. A wider pan gives a thin, dry cake that will not fold.
- "Cook slowly"Medium to medium-low heat. Six or seven minutes at a real simmer of butter is right; higher heat colors the surface before the interior has heated through.
- The foldSlide the spatula under one half, fold it over like an omelet, press it closed, then invert the pan onto the platter so the browned face shows. If the crust is not fully set the cake will tear, so test one edge before committing.
- YieldFour potatoes serves three to four as a side dish.
Hashed browned potatoes are a nineteenth-century American answer to the standing problem of yesterday's boiled potatoes. The word "hash" comes from the French hacher, to chop, and early American uses generally attach it to leftover meat cut fine and refried; potatoes followed the same logic. By the time the Butterick Publishing Company issued this book in 1911 the dish was familiar breakfast fare in hotels and boarding houses, and the folded, omelet-style presentation here may reflect that trade: a single browned cake turned out whole onto a platter looks considered in a way a pan of loose fried scraps does not. Butterick, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, aimed its cookbook at much the same middle-class housekeeper it sold sewing patterns to, and this recipe is characteristic of the book's economy, turning a remainder into a course worth serving.