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Hashed Lamb
Fry two chopped onions in a saucepan with about one ounce of butter, add one pint of cooked chopped potatoes, and one-half pound of cooked hashed lamb, season with one teaspoonful of pepper, one tablespoonful of salt, and one-half teaspoonful of nutmeg. Moisten with one-half pint of broth, and cook for ten minutes. Put the hash on a hot dish, and arrange half a dozen poached eggs on top. Serve sprinkled over with chopped parsley.
A leftover dish built for a hotel kitchen with cooked lamb and boiled potatoes already on hand. The seasoning as printed is the one thing to change.
- Cut the saltOne tablespoon of salt for roughly a pound and a half of already-cooked, already-seasoned meat and potato is far too much. Start with a teaspoon, taste after the broth goes in, and adjust. The teaspoon of pepper is also generous; half is plenty unless you want it assertive.
- A pint of potatoesMeasured by volume, as this recipe does: about 2 cups of cooked potato in small dice, roughly 3/4 lb before cooking. Waxy or leftover boiled potatoes hold their shape; baked or mashed will collapse into the broth.
- "Hashed lamb"Cooked lamb chopped small; chopping by knife rather than grinding suits the dish. Leftover roast shoulder or leg is ideal; the small irregular pieces catch on the pan and brown, which is most of the flavor.
- Broth and textureHalf a pint is one cup. Ten minutes over moderate heat should leave the hash moist but not soupy — if it is still loose, raise the heat for the last two minutes and let the bottom crust before you turn it out.
- NutmegHalf a teaspoon reads oddly to modern palates but is period-correct for lamb and potato. Grate it fresh; pre-ground nutmeg at that quantity tastes dusty.
- The eggsPoach them while the hash finishes and trim the ragged whites. Three minutes in barely-simmering water gives a set white and liquid yolk, which is the point — the yolk sauces the hash.
- YieldSix poached eggs means six servings as a light lunch or supper course, or four generous ones.
Hash of this kind is often said to have been a mainstay of the hotel breakfast and supper card, and a hotel kitchen ran on much the same logic as a thrifty household: yesterday's roast, chopped, stretched with potato and moistened with stock. What separates it from home hash is the finish, a scatter of parsley, the standard hotel gesture for turning a reheated dish into something a waiter could carry into a dining room. The nutmeg is a survival of a much older English and French habit of seasoning minced meat with sweet spice, still common in nineteenth-century forcemeats and hashes and largely gone from later American cooking.