Walnut Loaf
1 3/4 cups milk 1/4 cup vegetable oil 1 cup and 2 tablespoons granola or 1 1/2 cups zwieback crumbs 1/2 cup chopped walnuts 2 eggs, beaten 1 teaspoon salt Thoroughly mix the ingredients. Put into an oiled bread tin and bake till set. Serve with white sauce to which a few peas have been added.
A vegetarian nut loaf of the sort that stood in for a roast on meatless tables. The original gives no oven temperature and no time, so the doneness cue matters more than the clock.
- Oven and timeThe original gives no oven temperature or time. A moderate oven, around 350F, in an 8x4 or 9x5 loaf tin should suit; expect roughly 45 to 60 minutes. It is set when the centre no longer wobbles, around 160F.
- "Granola" is not modern granolaIn health-food cookbooks of this era granola meant a dry, twice-baked whole-grain cereal crumb, without added sweetening or oil. Today's clustered granola with honey, dried fruit and extra oil will make the loaf sweet and greasy. Plain coarse dry breadcrumbs or crushed shredded wheat are closer.
- Zwieback crumbsZwieback is a lightly sweetened twice-baked rusk, still sold as a hard baby biscuit. Crush to fine crumbs; the larger volume given for zwieback -- 1 1/2 cups against 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons of granola -- may simply reflect how much more loosely rusk crumbs pack.
- Let it hydrateAfter mixing, stand the batter 10 to 15 minutes before it goes into the tin. Dry crumbs that have not absorbed the milk give a loaf that crumbles when sliced.
- Bread tin"Bread tin" here means a standard loaf pan. Oil it well and line the base with parchment; a nut loaf of this type sticks. Rest 10 minutes before turning out.
- SeasoningA teaspoon of salt is the whole of the seasoning. Onion, sage or celery salt turn up in comparable recipes of the period and will not upset the structure.
- The white sauceA plain roux sauce: 2 tablespoons each butter or oil and flour, cooked a minute, then 1 cup milk whisked in and simmered until it coats a spoon. Fold in cooked peas at the end so they keep their colour.
- YieldOne loaf, four to six servings. It slices better cold and reheats well in a covered dish.
Loaves built from nuts, milk, eggs and a cereal crumb were a mainstay of American vegetarian cookery from the 1890s onward, promoted through the sanitarium kitchens and health-food publishing houses that also put granola on the market as a commercial product; zwieback, a much older European rusk, was likewise sold by such firms rather than originating with them. The point of such a loaf was structural as much as nutritional: it could be sliced, sauced and carved at table, occupying the place a joint of meat would otherwise hold. Walnuts were a usual choice because they were domestic, cheap in the shell, and rich enough to carry the dish. The accompanying white sauce with peas echoes the way boiled fowl and croquettes were served in the same period, and it suggests how closely these substitute dishes followed the conventions of the meat cooking they were meant to displace.