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Lentil and Nut Cakes
1/2 cup lentil puree 1/2 cup gluten meal, or zwieback crumbs, or very light-brown flour 1/2 cup chopped walnuts 1/4 cup strained tomato 1 teaspoon grated carrot 1/2 teaspoon salt Combine the ingredients, form into cakes, and bake for ten minutes.
A compact vegetarian patty of the sanitarium school, written in the shorthand of a cook who already knew the oven she was using. Two things are missing from the original and both matter: a temperature and a binder you can actually buy.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. Ten minutes implies a fairly hot oven; something in the 425-450F range would suit, though the original offers no guide, and even then the cakes are more warmed through than browned. At 375F allow 20-25 minutes, turning once, for a firm crust.
- Gluten mealThis was the high-protein wheat product sold by health-food houses of the period, not today's vital wheat gluten, which is far more concentrated and will turn the mixture rubbery. Zwieback crumbs are the easiest of the three options to reproduce: dry rusk or twice-baked bread, ground fine.
- "Very light-brown flour"Most likely flour toasted in a dry pan until it just colors, which takes off the raw pasty taste; the phrase could also describe a lightly milled brown flour. If toasting, work over low heat and stir constantly; it goes from blond to bitter quickly.
- Lentil pureeBrown or green lentils cooked soft in unsalted water and pressed through a sieve or blitzed smooth. It should be thick enough to hold a spoon upright; a wet puree will not form cakes and no amount of crumbs will rescue it.
- Strained tomatoCooked tomato pressed free of seeds and skin, roughly what is now sold as passata. Canned tomato puree is thicker and more concentrated, so use a scant quarter cup and loosen with a spoon of water.
- BindingNo egg is called for. The mixture holds only if the puree is stiff and the cakes are pressed firmly and chilled fifteen minutes before baking. Line the pan and oil it, or they will stick and tear.
- YieldThe measured ingredients come to a little under two cups, which suggests more like six to eight two-inch cakes; enough for two. The quantities double cleanly.
This belongs to the American vegetarian cookery that grew up around the health sanitariums of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where nuts and pulses were combined to make a "cake" or "roast" that stood in for meat at the center of the plate. Gluten meal and zwieback were both staples of that world, sold by the same houses that promoted flaked cereals, and a recipe that names either one as the binder is speaking to a household already stocked from a health-food catalogue. The grated carrot and strained tomato do the work that a meat drip or stock would do elsewhere: color, acidity and a little sweetness in a dish built entirely from lentils, walnuts and crumbs.