Turkey Hash
A newspaper editor in Lexington, Kentucky, reminded us of the Seven Ages of Turkey shortly after the turn of the 20th century: “Turkey, Cold Turkey, Turkey Croquettes, Minced Turkey, Turkey Hash, Turkey Bones, Turkey Soup.” This was published a decade before the rise of the turkey sandwich in the South. We here are concerned with the fifth age of turkey, turkey hash.
Nowadays hash means something different than it did a century ago. Hash now means a skillet cooked dish of chopped meat with potatoes and onion intended for breakfast eating. At an earlier age turkey hash meant chunks of white meat turkey dressed in a béchamel sauce that has been well flavored. It too was a breakfast dish, indeed a rather indestructible breakfast dish that could be warmed over and served up for a week. It was a breakfast fixture from Thanksgiving Day through the week after New Year’s Day, served in every boarding house, hotel, and household in the region. Too often it was the dish that revealed the limitations of the cook in the kitchen. And so it became something of a joke in the early 20th century. (See 1910 poem from the Baltimore Sun below.)
Yet it could be a sublime dish in deft hands. Served on rice using the chopped (not minced) meat of a rice field turkey that hasn’t been overcooked, and splashed with a half jigger of Madeira before being brought to the table, it could be the sublime center of a holiday breakfast. Sarah Rutledge’s recipe in The Carolina Housewife was the formula for good eats:
To hash a Turkey----Mix some flour with a piece of butter; stir it into some cream and a little veal gravy till it boils up; cut the turkey in pieces, not very small, and take off all the skin; put them into the sauce with grated lemon-peel, white pepper, and pounded mace, a little mushroom catsup or powder, and simmer it up. Oysters may be added.
Rutledge neglects to mention the salt, but its presence goes without saying. Another frequent addition unmentioned here is shallot. While the addition of oysters is Lowcountry to a T, in inland NC, SC, and GA crumbling cornbread into the mix became popular at the end of the 19th century and continues some places to this day.
Nowadays if you encounter turkey hash on a brunch menu in the South, you’ll get a turkey potato fry. Sometimes the classic dish will appear under the name “creamed turkey” but it is usually served on toast rather than rice, and you can bet you best money it doesn’t have (a) oysters, or (b) Madeira gracing it.