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For the Picnic
In the "Sunny South," picnics are in order as early as April, but in the more northern latitudes should never be attempted before the latter part of May or June, and September and October are the crowning months for them around the northern lakes, where hunting and fishing give zest to the sports. First, be up "at five o'clock in the morning," in order to have the chicken, biscuit, etc., freshly baked. Provide two baskets, one for the provisions, and the other for dishes and utensils, which should include the following: Tablecloth and an oil-cloth to put under it, napkins, towels, plates, cups, forks, a few knives and table-spoons, tea-spoons, sauce dishes, tin cups (or tumblers, if the picnickers are of the over-fastidious variety); a tin bucket, for water, in which a bottle of cream, lemons, oranges, or other fruit may be carried to the scene of action; another with an extra close cover, partly filled with made chocolate, which may be readily reheated by setting in an old tin pail or pan in which water is kept boiling a la custard-kettle; a frying-pan; a coffee-pot, with the amount of prepared coffee needed tied in a coarse, white flannel bag; a tea-pot, with tea in a neat paper package; tin boxes of salt, pepper, and sugar; a tin box for butter (if carried) placed next to block of ice, which should be well wrapped with a blanket and put in a shady corner of the picnic wagon. For extra occasions, add a freezer filled with frozen cream, with ice well packed around it, and heavily wrapped with carpeting. To pack the basket, first put in plates, cups, and sauce dishes carefully with the towels and napkins, and paper if needed; then add the rest, fitting them in tightly, and covering all with the table-cloth, and over it the oil-cloth. Tie the coffee and tea-pots, well wrapped up, and the frying-pan to the handles. Pack provision basket as full as the law allows, or as the nature of the occasion and the elasticity of the appetites demand. The following bills of fare may be picked to pieces and recombined to suit tastes and occasions:
SPRING PICNICS.-Cold roast chicken; ham broiled on coals; fish fried or broiled; sardines; tongue; hard boiled eggs; eggs to be fried or scrambled; Boston corn bread; buttered rolls; ham sandwiches prepared with grated ham; orange marmalade; canned peaches; watermelon and beet sweetpickles; euchered plums; variety or bottled pickles; chow-chow; quince or plum jelly; raspberry or other jams; Scotch fruit, rolled jelly, chocolate, Minnehaha, old-fashioned loaf, and marble cake; coffee, chocolate, tea; cream and sugar; salt and pepper; oranges.
SUMMER PICNICS.-Cold baked or broiled chicken; cold boiled ham; pickled salmon; cold veal loaf; Parker House rolls; light bread; box of butter; green corn boiled or roasted; new potatoes; sliced tomatoes; sliced cucumbers; French and Spanish pickles; peach and pear sweet-pickles; lemon or orange jelly; strawberries, raspberries, or blackberries; lemonade; soda-beer or raspberry vinegar; coffee and tea; ice-cream; lemon or strawberry-ice; sponge, white, Buckeye, or lemon cake; watermelon, muskmelon, nutmeg-melon.
FALL PICNICS.-Broiled prairie chicken; fish chowder; clam chowder; clams roasted or fried; beef omelet; cold veal roast; sardines; cold roast chicken; pot of pork and beans; rusk, Minnesota rolls, Boston brown bread; potatoes, Irish or sweet, roasted in ashes; egg sandwiches (hard-boiled eggs, sliced, sprinkled with pepper and salt, and put between buttered bread); mangoes; piccatilli; Chili sauce; quince marmalade; baked apples; musk and nutmeg-melon; crab apple jelly; grape jelly; black, orange, velvet, sponge, and three-ply cake; combination pie. 1 Mother's hash does n't taste of soap grease, rancid butter, spoiled cheese, raw flour, boarding-house skillets, hotel coffee, garden garlics, bologna sausage, or cayenne pepper; neither is it stewed and simmered and simmered and stewed, but is made so nicely, seasoned so delicately, and heated through so quickly, that the only trouble is, "there is never enough to go round." Cold meat of any kind will do, but corned beef is best; always remove all surplus fat and bits of gristle, season with salt and pepper, chop fine, and to one-third of meat add two-thirds of chopped cold boiled potato, and one onion chopped very fine; place in the dripping-pan, dredge with a little flour, and pour in at the side of the pan enough water to come up level with the hash, place in oven, and do not stir; when the flour is a light-brown, and has formed a sort of crust, take out, add a lump of butter, stir it through several times, and you will have a delicious hash. Or, by cooking longer, it may be made of cold raw potatoes, which peel, slice, and let lie in salt and water a half hour before chopping. If of meat and potatoes, always use the proportions given above, and before chopping, season with pepper and salt, and a chopped onion if you like (if onions are not to be had, take them out of pickle jar), place in hot skillet with just enough water to moisten, add a little butter or some nice beef drippings, stir often until warmed through, cover and let stand on a moderately hot part of the stove fifteen minutes. When ready to dish, run the knife under and fold as you would an omelet, and serve hot with tomato catsup. In making hash meats may be combined if there is not enough of a kind. Do not make hash or any other dish greasy. It is a mistaken idea to think that fat and butter in large quantities are necessary to good cooking. Butter and oils may be melted without changing their nature, but when cooked they become much more indigestible and injurious to weak stomachs.
Most of this page is a packing list and three seasonal bills of fare, but buried at the end is a complete working recipe for baked hash. The notes below cover that recipe first, then the picnic logistics.
- The hinge: do not stirThe oven method depends on leaving the pan alone so the flour dredged over the surface sets into a light-brown crust. Stirring before that crust forms gives you a wet mash instead. Butter goes in only after the pan comes out.
- ProportionsOne part chopped cooked meat to two parts chopped cooked potato, plus one finely chopped onion. Corned beef is specified as best; any cold roast or boiled meat works, and the book explicitly allows mixing leftovers. No quantities or yield are given.
- Oven heatNo temperature or time is given; the only cue is a "light-brown" crust. A moderate oven, in the region of 350F, is a reasonable modern reading, but the timing has to be judged by the crust. The dripping-pan is a shallow roasting pan; a cast-iron skillet will stand in.
- Water level"Enough water to come up level with the hash" poured in at the side of the pan is the whole technique: the liquid steams the mixture through while the base browns. Pour gently down the edge so you do not wash the flour off the top.
- The stovetop version"A moderately hot part of the stove" on a wood range corresponds to low heat, covered, for the stated fifteen minutes. The instruction to fold it like an omelet at the end means loosening the crust with a knife and turning one half over the other.
- Raw-potato variantRaw peeled and sliced potatoes soaked half an hour in salted water need, in the book's words, longer cooking; no time is given, so go by the tenderness of the potato.
- Onions from the pickle jarThe suggestion to take onions out of the pickle jar if none are fresh will make the hash sharper and slightly sweet, depending on the brine. Rinse and drain them or reduce the salt accordingly.
- Picnic cold-holdingThe original relies on a wrapped block of ice for the butter box and for packing round the ice-cream freezer; the cream simply travels in the water bucket. Cooked chicken, veal loaf, ham and hard-boiled eggs from these bills of fare should be held below 40F in a cooler with ice packs and eaten within two hours of coming out; the blanket-and-carpeting insulation described here was doing real work, not decoration.
- Two extinct conveniencesTwo vanished conveniences -- The flannel coffee bag is an infusion sack: ground coffee tied in cloth and steeped in the pot. "Made chocolate" is drinking chocolate already mixed and cooked, reheated in a water bath rather than over direct heat so it does not scorch.
The Dixie Cook Book of the 1880s was assembled by Estelle Woods Wilcox and draws heavily on her earlier Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, which accounts for the odd geography here: a book addressed to the "Sunny South" that recommends September and October picnics "around the northern lakes" -- and for the "Buckeye" cake in the summer bill of fare. Rail excursions, ice delivery and the tin-plated pails and boxes that fill the packing list all shaped the sort of picnic described. The hash at the end is the more interesting survival. The word comes from the French hacher, to chop, and hash was a standard American answer to cold roast meat; the writer's complaint about hash that tastes of soap grease and boarding-house skillets is aimed at cheap eating-houses and boarding tables, and "hash-house" was already a term of contempt in American slang by this period. The closing lecture on fat and indigestibility reflects the period's confident dietetics, in which cooked butter and oil were held to be actively injurious to "weak stomachs."