Categories
1900-1949 Food & Drink

Vintage recipe – Meat and Potato Turnovers

More from my Great-Grandma’s 1930s recipe book today. It’s Meat and Potato Turnovers, a pastie in other words.

Old family recipe book
Old family recipe book

Ingredients

1 lb flour

6 oz lard

1 tsp salt

A pinch cream of tartar

Filling for turnovers:

1 1/2 lb potatoes

2 oz meat minced

A little onion

Season with pepper and salt

Scatter a little flour in and boil until done.

Method

Rub lard into flour and [add] all other dry ingredients. Mix to a nice paste with cold water. Weigh 2 1/2 oz paste for each turnover. Roll out, out in the filling, fold up, egg wash, bake 25 minutes good hot oven top shelf.

Meat and Potato Turnovers, 1930s recipe
Meat and Potato Turnovers, 1930s recipe

As this is a 1930s recipe, the meat saving element is very much to be seen with 1 1/2 pounds of potatoes to only 2oz of meat. I upped the meat to about 300g and reduced the potatoes to about 500g, browned with a fried onion, flour stirred in, just enough water to cover everything, and cooked until the potatoes were tender. There was too much filling for the amount of pastry I ended up with, but that’s fine – meat and potato leftovers are easy enough to use in other dishes, or just to eat by themselves, Nigella-style in front of the fridge.

I wasn’t sure what shape there were supposed to be, so made them in traditional half-moon pastie-style, and cooked them at 200 degrees for 25 minutes. As my daughter has an egg allergy, I brushed them with milk instead of egg.

As you’d expect they tasted comforting and old-fashioned, the lardy pastry feeling very traditional. Best eaten warm, and on an old plate – I got out my 1950s Ridgway Homemakers Woolworths plate for the occasion.