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Beef Loaf (Pounds lean meat tablespoons)
2 pounds lean meat, 3 tablespoons Crisco, 1/4 pound salt pork, 1 cup cracker crumbs, 3 beaten eggs, 1 teaspoon onion juice, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 1 cup beef stock, salt and pepper to taste.
Wipe meat, remove all skin and membranes, then put it through meat grinder, add Crisco melted, eggs, crumbs, onion juice, lemon juice, stock and seasonings. Press into greased pan and cover. Bake 1 hour. Baste occasionally during baking with melted Crisco.
A plain baked meat loaf from one of Procter & Gamble's Crisco promotional cookbooks, where the shortening turns up in places butter or suet would once have gone. The method as printed leaves out a step and gives no oven temperature.
- The salt pork is orphanedIt appears in the ingredient list and never again in the method. Grind it with the lean beef; it is there to supply the fat that a lean cut lacks, and without it the loaf will be dry despite the Crisco.
- Oven temperatureThe book assumes a cook who knows her range. A covered meat loaf of this size wants a moderate oven, 350F, for the stated hour; check for 160F at the centre before taking it out.
- CriscoIntroduced in 1911 and the whole reason this book exists. Any neutral solid shortening works, and melted butter or beef drippings will taste better. Three tablespoons is not much for two pounds of lean meat.
- Onion juicePeriod cookbooks call for this constantly. Grate half a small onion on a fine grater and press the pulp through a sieve, or substitute a tablespoon of very finely grated onion and accept a little texture.
- Cracker crumbsCrushed soda crackers or saltines, not sweet crumbs. A cup of dry breadcrumbs is a fair swap, though saltines bring salt with them, so season the mixture cautiously.
- Basting under a coverLittle basting fat will reach the meat through a lid, and it mostly runs off. If you want a browned top, take the cover off for the last fifteen minutes and brush with fat then.
- The loose mixtureA cup of stock plus three eggs makes a soft, moist mixture, though the cup of cracker crumbs absorbs much of it. Press it firmly into the pan so it does not fall apart, and let the loaf rest ten minutes before slicing.
- YieldSix to eight servings. Loaves of this kind were often eaten cold in slices as well as hot, and leftovers could turn up at supper or in sandwiches.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, the hydrogenated cottonseed shortening that reached American shops in 1911, and the book's function explains the three tablespoons of melted Crisco worked into a meat loaf that hardly needs them. Beef loaf itself belongs to the older tradition of forcemeats and pressed potted meats, adapted to the domestic meat grinder that became common household equipment in the later nineteenth century; grinding let a thrifty cook stretch a cheap lean cut with crumbs, eggs and stock, and salt pork supplied the fat that the cut did not. The lemon juice and onion juice are typical of the period's taste for sharp, clean seasoning in a mild dish.