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Beef Hash
Chop fine cold beef, either boiled or baked; have ready cold boiled potatoes ; to one pint of meat put one pint and a little more of potatoes, chopped fine; have ready a spider, with a good piece of butter in it; put in the hash; season with pepper and salt, and then add rich milk or cream. Milk is a very great improvement.
A plain skillet hash built by volume rather than weight, with almost nothing specified about heat or time. Two details need translating and one needs supplying.
- A spider is a skilletThe spider was a cast-iron frying pan, originally with three legs to stand over coals. Any heavy cast-iron or carbon-steel skillet of 10 to 12 inches does the same work; the point is a pan that holds steady heat so the hash browns rather than steams.
- Measuring by the pintBoth meat and potatoes are measured as chopped volume, not weight. A pint of finely chopped cooked beef comes to somewhere around 10 to 12 oz, and a pint of chopped boiled potato is in the same range, depending on how closely it is packed. The ratio matters more than the absolute amounts: slightly more potato than meat.
- How much milkThe original gives no quantity. Start with about a third of a cup for this volume of hash and add more only if the mixture looks dry; enough to bind and moisten, not enough to pool in the pan.
- Heat and time, which the recipe omitsMedium heat, and leave it alone. Press the hash into an even layer and let it sit eight to ten minutes before disturbing it, so a crust forms on the bottom, then turn it in sections. Constant stirring gives you a warm mash with no browning.
- The potatoes should be cold and day-oldThe potatoes should be cold -- Freshly boiled potatoes are wet and will break down into paste when chopped and fried. Cold, firm boiled potatoes hold their edges and take colour.
- SeasoningCold cooked beef, especially boiled, is bland by the time it reaches the hash. Salt it more assertively than you expect, and add the pepper generously; this is the only seasoning in the dish.
- YieldAbout a quart of hash, which serves three to four as a main course with eggs, or four to six as a side.
Hash is the classic answer to the joint of meat that has already been to table once, and nineteenth-century American cookbooks are full of it because a household roasting or boiling a large cut had to plan for the leftovers before refrigeration made keeping them casual. The word comes from the French hacher, to chop, and the whole method is in the name. What dates this version is the spider: a long-handled iron pan on legs, made to sit directly in the hearth ashes, and still the default frying vessel in print well after cast-iron stoves had made the legs pointless.