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Corned Beef Hash Au Gratin
Finely chop one white onion, place in saucepan with a tablespoon melted butter and brown to a light colour, then add a pound finely chopped, cooked corned beef and half the quantity cold boiled potatoes, also finely chopped. Moisten with a half pint broth season with half teaspoon pepper and saltspoon grated nutmeg, mix well and cover pan. Cook on fire for ten minutes, mixing a little, then set in oven for forty minutes. Remove, dress on a baking dish, sprinkle a little bread crumbs over, baste surface with a little melted butter, set in oven again for fifteen minutes, remove and serve.
A straightforward hash, but the original assumes you know what oven to use and how much liquid a "half pint" is. The proportions are unusual for hash: twice as much beef as potato, and enough broth that the mixture starts out wet.
- Half pint of brothThat is one cup in US measure (an imperial half pint would be about 10 oz). The mixture should look loose when it goes in the oven; the long bake is what drives the moisture off and concentrates the beef flavour.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is roughly a quarter teaspoon. Note that no salt is called for anywhere — corned beef carries plenty, and the recipe is right to leave it out. Taste before the final bake rather than seasoning on faith.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Treat both stages as a moderate oven, 350F. Anything hotter during the forty-minute stage will scorch the edges before the centre has dried down.
- ProportionsOne pound of beef to "half the quantity" potatoes means about 8 oz of cold boiled potato — leaner in starch than most modern hash. Waxy potatoes boiled the day before chop cleanly; freshly boiled ones turn to paste under the knife.
- The hinge: chop, do not grindEverything is finely chopped by hand. A food processor turns corned beef into a pink paste that will bake into a solid block. Cut the beef into small dice with a knife so the finished dish still has texture.
- Total oven timeFifty-five minutes in two stages, which is long by modern habit but deliberate: the first forty minutes reduce the broth, the last fifteen crisp the crumbs. If the surface is browning too fast at the end, move the dish to a lower rack rather than cutting the time.
- Baking dish and crumbsUse a shallow gratin dish so there is maximum surface for the crust. Dry breadcrumbs, not fresh, and be sparing with the butter baste — a heavy hand makes the topping greasy instead of crisp.
- YieldAbout four servings as a main course with a poached egg or a green salad, six as part of a larger breakfast.
Corned beef hash is thrift cookery given a French finish. "Corned" refers to the coarse grains, or corns, of salt used to cure the beef, a preservation method that made brisket and round a household staple long before refrigeration; the hash existed to use up the boiled beef and potatoes left from a previous dinner. What marks this version as belonging to a professional cookbook is the treatment: the browned onion, the moistening with broth, the grating of nutmeg, and above all the crumbed and buttered gratin top, all borrowed from the classical repertoire and applied to leftovers. Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, tended to write this way throughout — a domestic dish handled with the technique of a restaurant kitchen. The nutmeg is worth noticing: it was more common in savoury meat and potato dishes then than now, and it is the one seasoning here that will taste distinctly period.