William Rock
1 cupful chopped walnut- 2 meats 2 eggs
NUT
NUT LOAF
1 tablespoonful minced parsley 3 tablespoonfuls butter 1 pint medium-thick white sauce ½ cupful uncoated rice, washed Dry bread crumbs 1 teaspoonful salt 1/8 teaspoonful black pepper Boil the rice, drain and dry. Mix it with an equal quantity of dry bread crumbs, then add the salt, pepper, nuts and parsley. Break the eggs into this mixture, stir thoroughly and pack into a buttered pan for a few minutes to mold. Unmold into a small dripping-pan and bake slowly for three-quarters of an hour, basting with the butter, melted. Serve surrounded with the sauce.
The page as printed has two headings and a scrambled ingredient list — the words "Fried Cauliflower" and a stray "2" belong to a neighbouring recipe that ran into this one. What survives intact is a complete nut loaf: rice, crumbs, walnuts, parsley, eggs, butter and a white sauce to pour round it.
- Read the ingredient list carefullyThe usable list is 1 cup chopped walnut meats, 2 eggs, 1 tablespoon minced parsley, 3 tablespoons butter, 1 pint medium-thick white sauce, 1½ cups rice, dry bread crumbs, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/8 teaspoon black pepper. Anything about cauliflower is printer's debris.
- "Uncoated rice"Polished rice was commonly finished with a coating of glucose and talc to brighten the grain, and some recipes of the period specify uncoated rice to avoid it. Any plain long-grain white rice today qualifies; no special purchase is needed.
- Bake slowlyThe book gives no temperature; a slow oven is usually reckoned somewhere around 300-325F. Three-quarters of an hour at that sort of heat sets the eggs and dries the surface without cracking the loaf.
- Medium-thick white sauceA pint made in the usual proportion: roughly 4 tablespoons butter and 4 tablespoons flour cooked together, then 2 cups milk whisked in and simmered until it coats a spoon. Note that the 3 tablespoons butter in the list is for basting, not for the sauce. Season it -- the loaf itself is mildly seasoned.
- The molding step is the hingePacking the mixture tightly into a buttered pan first, then turning it out, is what holds the loaf together; there is no flour or panade binding it beyond the eggs. Press hard and chill it 20–30 minutes rather than "a few minutes" if the rice is still warm and loose.
- Equal parts rice and crumbs1½ cups raw rice yields roughly 4½ cups cooked, so you need about the same volume of dry crumbs. Use dry, fine crumbs rather than fresh soft ones or the loaf turns pasty.
- BastingMelt the butter and brush or spoon it over two or three times during baking. Without it the exposed crumb surface scorches before the centre sets.
- YieldA generous loaf; six or more as a main dish. The recipe directs that it be served surrounded with the sauce.
Nut loaves like this one belong to the vegetarian cookery that spread out of American health-reform circles in the late nineteenth century — the sanitarium kitchens of Battle Creek and the temperance and hygiene movements that surrounded them — and by 1900 they had crossed into mainstream household cookbooks as a meatless dinner dish for Fridays, Lent, or plain economy. The formula tends to run along familiar lines: a starchy bulk (rice, breadcrumbs, sometimes hominy or lentils), chopped nuts for richness and protein, egg to bind, and a white sauce to make it read as a joint of meat. Its appearance in a celebrity-contributed collection like this is characteristic of the genre.