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Fish Hash
1 cup any kind of 1 tablespoonful green white fish 1 cup diced potatoes I hard-cooked egg 1 teaspoonful mixed mustard 1 tablespoonful green sweet pepper, shredded 2 tablespoonfuls melted butter ½ cup milk Salt, pepper Flake the fish, add seasoning, chop the egg, toss the potatoes in the melted butter, and mix all together. Melt a little extra butter in a fryingpan, and when hot add the mixture, cover, and cook slowly until all is well blended, then uncover and brown on bottom. Fold over and turn out on a warm platter.
A skillet hash built on cooked leftover fish, close kin to corned beef hash and finished the same way — a browned crust on the bottom, then folded like an omelette onto the platter.
- The hingeDo not stir once the mixture is in the pan. Press it into an even cake, cover, and leave it alone so a crust forms; stirring turns it into scrambled fish. Only uncover at the end to check the browning.
- Which fish"Any kind of white fish" means cod, haddock, halibut, hake or pollock already cooked. Oily fish such as mackerel or salmon will work but dominate; smoked fish should be cut with an extra half cup of potato.
- QuantitiesThe ingredient column has run together in places. Read it as roughly 1 cup flaked fish, 1 cup diced cooked potato, 1 hard-cooked egg, 1 teaspoon prepared mustard, 1 tablespoon shredded green sweet pepper, 2 tablespoons melted butter and ½ cup milk.
- The milkMilk appears in the list but never in the method. Add it a little at a time when mixing, only until the hash just holds together — a wet mixture will steam rather than brown.
- Mixed mustardThis is prepared mustard made up from powder with water, not dry mustard. A teaspoon of any smooth prepared mustard stands in; a grainy one changes the texture.
- Heat and time"Cook slowly" points to medium-low heat. No times are given; allow perhaps 15 to 20 minutes covered, then a few minutes uncovered for the crust, judging by the browning. Everything in the pan is already cooked, so the only question is the bottom.
- PotatoesCold, firm boiled potatoes dice cleanly and hold their shape. Freshly boiled hot ones break down into paste when tossed in the butter.
- YieldNo yield is given; the quantities would stretch to about two as a main dish or four at breakfast. Doubling it needs a wider pan rather than a deeper one, or the centre will not set.
Left-over cookery was a genre of its own in the early twentieth century, and books of this kind answered to a household with limited refrigeration that cooked more than it ate. Fish hash sits comfortably in a New England tradition where salt cod and fresh white fish were cheap and boiled potatoes always to hand, though nothing in the recipe itself fixes it to a region; the technique — bind, press, brown, fold — is the one applied to corned beef, chicken and vegetables in the same sort of book. The fold-and-turn-out finish resembles omelette practice, and it gets a browned crust onto a warm platter intact.