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Beef Hash
Pick off all the meat from the roast beef left over from yesterday and cut it into small dice pieces. Have half that quantity of finely chopped, cold, boiled potatoes. Heat a tablespoon butter in a small saucepan, add one finely chopped onion and cook to a light brown, occasionally stirring. Add the beef and potatoes. Season with half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons white pepper, and a saltspoon ground nutmeg. Moisten with half pint white broth. Lightly mix, cover the pan and cook on the range for five minutes, then set in the oven to bake for thirty minutes. Remove, dress on a hot dish, sprinkle a teaspoon of freshly chopped parsley over and serve.
A leftovers dish with an unusually precise hand: the beef-to-potato ratio and the nutmeg are what distinguish it from ordinary skillet hash. Two measurements need translating before you start.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So two saltspoons white pepper is 1/2 teaspoon, and a saltspoon of nutmeg is 1/4 teaspoon — assertive but correct for this style.
- Half pintOne cup of broth. In an American book of this period a pint is 16 fl oz, not the British 20.
- White brothA pale, unbrowned stock, traditionally veal or chicken, used where the cook did not want the dish darkened. Low-sodium chicken stock is the closest substitute; if you use beef stock, cut the added salt, since it will already taste seasoned.
- Oven heatNone is specified, and the recipe gives no heat term to interpret. For a covered dish that is already hot, a moderate oven of around 350F is a reasonable reading, but the figure is not in the book. The half-hour bake appears intended to let the potato absorb the broth rather than to brown anything.
- The ratioTwice as much beef as potato, by volume, which reverses the proportions of much modern diner hash. Keep it: the potato works as a binder here, and doubling it risks a stodgy result against only one cup of broth.
- Dice size and drynessCut the beef small and even; already-cooked roast beef reheated in large cubes tends to stay tough and dry however long it bakes. Cold, firm boiled potatoes chop cleanly, where freshly boiled ones are likelier to break down to paste when mixed.
- Cover itBake covered, as written. Uncovered, a cup of broth will reduce away well before the half hour is up and the meat will dry out. If you want a crust, take the lid off for the last five minutes only.
- YieldDepends entirely on the roast, but the leftovers of a family joint — roughly a pound of picked meat with a half pound of potato — serve three to four.
Hash is the household economy of the meat-roasting cultures written down: the word comes from the French hacher, to chop, and cookbooks of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries treat it as the obligatory second life of a roast rather than a dish in its own right. The nutmeg, the white pepper, and the pale stock suggest an intent to keep the dish light in colour and delicately spiced. The International Cook Book (1906) was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long of Delmonico's in New York, and his habit of specifying white broth, saltspoon measures, and dressing the finished dish on a hot platter is restaurant-kitchen discipline applied to yesterday's beef.