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Beef Loaf (Take two pounds of beef)
Take two pounds of beef from the lower part of the round, chop fine, add one-half cup of stale bread crumbs, one-half cup milk, one egg beaten, one-half teaspoon each of salt and pepper, one medium sized onion, chopped fine. Mould into an oblong loaf, place in a greased shallow pan, and lay over it thin slices of salt pork. Bake in a hot oven one hour, basting often.
A plain baked meatloaf of the sort that turns up in every regional community cookbook of the period. The chief adjustments are the oven and the fat.
- "A hot oven"In turn-of-the-century usage this means roughly 400-450F. That is hotter than a meat loaf wants for a full hour; 375F for about an hour is closer to modern practice, with the loaf pulled at an internal temperature of 160F.
- Lower roundBottom round is lean, which is why the salt pork sits on top. If you grind your own, ask for a coarse grind, or use ordinary 85% ground beef and expect a moister, softer loaf.
- Salt porkThin slices of salt pork are the basting fat and the seasoning both. Unsmoked streaky bacon or pancetta substitutes directly; if you use smoked bacon the loaf will taste noticeably of smoke, which the original does not.
- SaltA half teaspoon of salt for two pounds of meat is light by current taste, but the pork covering adds more as it renders. Season the mixture, fry a teaspoonful to taste it, then adjust.
- PepperA half teaspoon of pepper against a half teaspoon of salt is a forward ratio by current taste; the wording 'each' may be no more than period shorthand. Taste and adjust.
- Basting"basting often" means spooning the rendered pork fat and pan juices back over the loaf every 15 minutes or so. A shallow pan makes this easy; a deep loaf tin steams the sides instead.
- Bread crumbsStale crumbs from a dry, close-grained loaf, not the fine dried crumbs sold in canisters. Soak them in the half cup of milk for a few minutes before mixing so they swell evenly.
- YieldTwo pounds of meat gives six to eight servings hot, and the loaf slices better cold the next day than it does straight from the oven.
Beef loaf belongs to the great late-nineteenth-century family of chopped-meat dishes that spread once mechanical meat grinders became cheap household equipment; before that, "chopped fine" meant a good deal of work with a knife or a chopping bowl. The formula here, meat bound with soaked bread and egg and enriched with an external layer of salt pork, is essentially a thrift dish, a way of making the lean lower round palatable and stretching two pounds across a family table. A keeping loaf that could be eaten hot at dinner and sliced cold for supper or a lunch pail earned its place. The word "receipt" for "recipe" was still ordinary American usage well into the twentieth century.