No. 2296

Hashed Lamb with Bananas

Hachis d'Agneau aux Bananes

Take six ounces of lean, skinless and nerveless cold lamb cut in one-eighth of an inch squares; fry a tablespoonful of finely chopped onion in butter and when done, but not browned, add to it a quarter of a pound of cooked and finely minced potatoes; moisten with a little stock (No. 194a), reduce for a few moments to the consistency of a sauce, and add the lamb cut into squares; heat up all without boiling and dress on a dish, surrounding the hash with slices of bread cut in triangles and fried in butter. Decorate the top of the hash with two bananas peeled and cut lengthwise in two, roll in flour, fry them in very hot oil, drain and cut them across in two and with these quartered fruits garnish the top of the hash.

← No. 2295 Hashed Lamb, Creole Style Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2297 Hashed Mutton a la Omer Pacha →

For the Modern Kitchen

A small, tidy dish built to use up yesterday's roast leg or shoulder. Everything depends on how gently the meat is treated once it goes into the potato base.

The hinge: never let it boilAlready-cooked lamb that simmers in sauce turns dry and stringy within a minute or two. Fold the diced meat into the hot potato mixture off direct heat, or over the lowest flame, just long enough to warm through.
"Nerveless"Ranhofer means free of sinew, silverskin and gristle, not nerves. Trim the cold lamb closely before dicing; 6 oz of trimmed meat means starting with rather more.
Dice sizeAn eighth of an inch is very fine, roughly the width of a matchstick. Chill the lamb thoroughly and use a sharp knife; the point is that the meat should bind with the potato rather than sit in it as lumps.
The stockNo. 194a is the stock the book cross-references here. A well-reduced brown chicken or lamb stock does the job. Add it a spoonful at a time; you want the potato to slacken to a thick sauce, not a soup.
The potatoesA quarter pound of cooked potato, minced fine, is the binder. Boiled or leftover roast both work; passed through a ricer they thicken the stock more smoothly than chopping does.
Frying the bananasUse firm, barely ripe fruit and oil hot enough to crisp the flour coating at once (around 350-375F on a modern thermometer). Overripe bananas collapse in the flour coating and go to mush. They fry quickly and should be drained and cut only just before serving.
YieldAs written this serves two as a light entrée, or four in the multi-course sequence the book assumes. Scale the lamb and potato together, keeping the roughly 3:2 ratio by weight.
AssemblyFry the bread triangles and bananas last and plate immediately; both lose their crispness within a few minutes of meeting the moist hash.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and its long lists of hashes show how a restaurant of that scale used up cooked meat without admitting to leftovers: dice it small, bind it with potato and stock, and dress it up with a garnish. The bananas are the period detail. By the 1880s and 1890s steam shipping from Central America and the Caribbean had made bananas a regular, still slightly exotic, sight in New York markets. The neighboring entries, a hash "Creole Style" and one named for Omer Pasha, suggest the same impulse: a plain dish given a title and a flourish borrowed from somewhere warmer.