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August 16
Menu: Cream of Rice Soup; Hanoverian Steaks; Hashed Browned Potatoes; Carrots en Casserole; Custard Souffle, Foamy Sauce; Coffee Hashed Browned Potatoes-Sprinkle 2½ cups cold boiled potato cubes with salt and white pepper to suit taste. Melt 1½ tablespoons Crisco; add 1 tablespoon flour and 1/2 cup brown stock. Cook 5 minutes; add potato cubes; cook 10 minutes, stirring, without breaking potatoes. Melt 1 tablespoon Crisco in another frying pan. When brown, turn in potatoes, spread evenly, and cook 10 minutes; fold like an omelet, and serve hot.
A gravy-bound hash rather than a dry, crisp one: the potatoes are moistened with a flour-thickened stock before being browned and folded. The result is closer to a potato cake with a creamy interior.
- The hinge: leave the potatoes aloneOnce the cubes go into the second pan, spread them and do not touch them for the full 10 minutes. Stirring at that stage breaks the cubes and prevents the crust that holds the fold together.
- CriscoCrisco was launched in 1911 as hydrogenated cottonseed shortening; today's product is reformulated and no longer contains the trans fats of the original. Any neutral shortening, butter, or oil works here, and the small quantities make substitution straightforward.
- Brown stockA dark beef or veal stock, browned bones and all. Commercial beef broth is thinner and saltier, so hold back the salt until after the stock reduces.
- White pepperConventionally called for in pale dishes so the potato is not flecked. Black pepper will do if you do not mind the specks, though its flavour is not identical.
- PotatoesCold boiled potatoes are essential: freshly boiled ones are too wet and fall apart. A waxy or all-purpose potato holds cube shape better than a russet. The recipe does not give a cube size; roughly half-inch dice works.
- Pan sizes and heatThe recipe specifies neither pan size nor heat; an 8- to 10-inch skillet over medium heat suits this quantity. The first 10 minutes with the stock should reduce it to a thick coating, not a soup; if it is still loose, cook it down before transferring.
- FoldingSlide a thin spatula around and under one half, then fold it over like an omelet. If the crust has not set, it will tear; give it another two or three minutes rather than forcing it.
- YieldTwo and a half cups of potato serves two generously, three at a stretch, as a breakfast or supper side.
The recipe comes from The Story of Crisco, the 1913 cookbook Procter & Gamble published to teach American cooks what to do with the new hydrogenated shortening it had introduced two years earlier. The book's "Calendar of Dinners" assigned a full menu to every day of the year, which is why an ordinary potato hash carries the date August 17. The dish itself belongs to the older tradition of hashed brown potatoes, which in nineteenth-century American cooking could mean potatoes bound with cream or gravy and browned in a cake, rather than the loose, crisp shreds the name now suggests. Recipes of this kind are often said to have served to use up the cold boiled potatoes that a household cooking daily would inevitably have on hand.