Dressing
Soak stale bread in cold water till just moistened though not real wet. Place it in a colander to drain, then crumble or pick it to pieces lightly. To one pint of these moist crumbs add: 2 tablespoons oil 1/4 cup brown gravy 1 teaspoon sage 1/2 teaspoon thyme 1/2 teaspoon marjoram 1/4 cup chopped parsley 1/2 teaspoon summer savory 1 teaspoon salt Mix ingredients lightly, but do not mash together. Put into an oiled bread tin. Do not pack down. Bake till well heated through. To serve, place a spoonful of the dressing on a platter or plate, lay a slice of protose on the dressing, and pour some gravy over all.
A baked bread dressing served as a separate dish rather than stuffed into a bird, from a vegetarian household kitchen. Two things need translating: the oven is never named, and one ingredient no longer exists.
- ProtoseA canned wheat-gluten and peanut meat substitute made at Battle Creek and sold from the late 1890s onward. It was produced commercially for most of the twentieth century and is no longer available; a firm seitan loaf or a dense commercial gluten roast, sliced thick, stands in for it.
- Brown gravyIn this tradition that means a meatless gravy: flour or bread browned dry in a pan, then oil and water or a vegetable stock whisked in and simmered. A quarter cup goes into the dressing and more is poured over at the table, so make extra; the recipe does not say how much.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Bake at 350F, uncovered, until hot through; the recipe asks for nothing more than that, so 30 to 40 minutes is a reasonable guide.
- A pint of crumbsTwo cups of moistened, loosely picked crumbs. Weigh nothing; the volume is measured after soaking and draining, not before.
- The hingeDo not pack the tin and do not mash the mixture. The whole point of soaking, draining and picking the bread apart is a light open crumb; compressed dressing bakes into a solid brick.
- HerbsThe quantities assume dried leaf herbs, and sage plus thyme plus marjoram plus savory in a single pint of crumbs is assertive by current taste. The parsley is fresh and chopped. Halve the sage if you want the other herbs to register.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. A pint of crumbs will plate as a few servings as a main course with gravy and a slice of protein, more as a side.
This is a recipe from the vegetarian kitchens that grew up around the Seventh-day Adventist health-reform movement, and the tell is protose, one of the gluten-and-peanut canned foods developed in Battle Creek, Michigan, in the 1890s and sold widely to Adventist households through the early twentieth century. The dressing itself is entirely conventional American bread stuffing of the period, with the familiar poultry herbs of sage, thyme, marjoram and summer savory, but it has been lifted out of the bird and baked in a loaf tin so that it can be sliced and plated. That substitution -- keeping the familiar shape of the Sunday dinner while replacing the roast at its centre -- is the characteristic move of these cookbooks.