There are hashes and hashes. Thin slices of meat, sent up in an immense dish, with a thin watery gravy covered with greasy spots, and surrounded with sodden sippets, is a dish as unappetising as it is unnecessary. Good hash is really very nice, and it is quite possible, with a little extra trouble, and without extra expense, to make out of the fag-end of a cold leg of mutton a dish that even Mrs. Gamp herself would not scorn to eat.

I think the first point to be aimed at is to have the gravy a good colour; secondly, of a good consistency. Suppose you have, say, the remains of a cold roast or boiled leg of mutton - and you want to make a really good hash. First, cut off all the meat carefully in nice, neat, small slices, and remove at once all skin and gristle - anything, in fact, that is likely to be rejected or left. This, with the bone chopped up, will make a little stock, No. 3. (See No. 10.) Next, take a large onion, or even two. And I would here state that, if the flavour of onion is objected to, it is better not to make hash at all, but have a dish of mince instead. Slice the onion, and fry it of a nice rich brown colour in a frying-pan, with a little dripping, or some of the spare mutton fat. Boil the stock away (see No. 26) till there is not much more than half a pint. Add this to the onion; rub the whole through a wire sieve (see No. 21) into a basin. You will now have a fairly good-coloured sauce. Add a little Liebig's Extract of Meat, a few drops of "Caramel" (see No. 19), a dessertspoonful of Harvey Sauce, and a little pepper and salt. Now thicken with a little corn-flour - a very little will be sufficient - till the sauce is as thick as cream. Then take the slices of meat which have been already cooked, and simply make them hot through in this sauce, and put the hash in a vegetable-dish.

The usual plan is to put some bread sippets round hash, but fried bread cut into shapes looks far better. (See No. 7.) Place the fried bread round the edge of the hash, and between each a small pickled walnut, or, if hot things are liked, half a red chili; this, so to speak, brightens up the dish, and to many the chili is a very great improvement.

The sauce should be a nice rich dark brown. Again, if you have bay-leaves, three or four bay-leaves can be warmed up in the gravy, and sent up in the sauce, whole. It raises the tone of the dish.

This, I admit, will take time, but the result will well repay you.

A quicker way is to send up the fried onion in the gravy without rubbing it through a wire sieve. Ketchup will do instead of Harvey Sauce, but it is not so good. Worcester Sauce is too overpowering. A cheaper way is to omit the extract of meat.

To make good hash, however, you must avoid swimming the meat in gravy. There is no excuse, too, for not thickening it. Corn-flour is cheap, and the quantity required will cost almost nothing. Burnt sugar is also cheap; therefore, why not have a little by you, ready for use? (See No. 19).

If in summer you can get a nice fresh mushroom, this, fried with the onion, is an immense improvement.

Some recommend browning the meat in the frying-pan. The principal objection to hash is that the meat is over-cooked. If, however, the meat is underdone - not an uncommon thing in a boiled leg of mutton - then, just colour the slices of underdone meat. Get a very little fat in the frying-pan and make it very hot, so that the meat turns colour instantly, This will make it more tender, and keep in the juice.

This applies to beef and mutton; veal is always best minced. Lamb does not hash well, and is far preferable cold with mint sauce, or it can be minced.

In hashing duck, goose, fowl, it is always best to cut the meat off the bones, and stew the bones for stock. Proceed as above, but omit the Harvey Sauce; also omit the walnuts and chilies. A mushroom improves fowl, turkey, Arc, but is best avoided with duck and goose. A little sage-and-onion seasoning can be warmed up with these latter and handed separately.