Mary Cassatt, Lady at the Tea Table, 1883–85

My corned beef and cabbage recipe attracted attention all weekend, but the classic meal was never served in my mother's lace-curtain Irish household.

"Cabbage smells up the house," Mom would say, turning up her nose as she echoed her mother and her memories of immigrants' tenement hallways. Dad was told to have his corned beef and cabbage for lunch, elsewhere.

My first attempt at making it in my first apartment turned out tough and inedible. It hadn't occurred to me that this was not the best cut of meat and needed long, slow braising. I think I tried to bake it.

Yesterday -- like Dad -- I had corned beef for lunch, but it was hardly traditional: a reuben -- hot corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and mustard on toasted unseeded rye -- from the Greek place across the street from the Journal. (That's a good way to use leftovers today.)

Tired and not very hungry last night, I toasted store-bought soda bread and brewed good coffee and called it dinner.

When it came right down to it, the Irish meal I most remember from childhood, the quintessential comfort food of the elders, was toast and tea: White bread lightly toasted with butter and sweet milky tea.

Maybe that's the tradition I was really honoring on St. Patrick's Day.