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Some Kitchen Kinks: Roast
Boston Roast. 1 pound can of kidney beans or equivalent quantity of cooked beans. ½ pound of grated cheese.
Bread crumbs.
Salt.
Mash the beans or put them through a meat grinder. Add the cheese and sufficient bread crumbs to make the mixture stiff enough to be formed into a roll. Bake in a moderate oven, basting occasionally with butter and water. Serve with tomato sauce. This dish may be flavored with onions, chopped and cooked in butter and water.
Pimiento and Cheese Roast. 2 cupsful of cooked Lima beans. 1/4 pound of cream cheese, cornmercial or home made. 3 canned pimientos chopped, Bread crumbs.
Put the first three ingredients through a meat chopper. Mix thoroughly and add bread crumbs until it is stiff enough to form into a roll.
Brown in the oven, basting occasionally with butter and water. Nut and Cheese Roast. 1 cupful of grated cheese. 1 cupful of chopped English walnuts. 1 cupful of bread crumbs. 2 tablespoonsful of chopped onion. 1 tablespoonful of butter.
Juice of half a lemon.
Salt and pepper.
Cook the onion in the butter and a little water until it is tender. Mix the other ingredients and moisten with water, using the water in which the onion has been cooked. Pour into a shallow baking dish and brown in the oven.
Cheese and Spinach Roll. 2 quarts of spinach. 1 cupful of grated cheese. 1 tablespoonful of butter.
Salt.
Bread crumbs.
Cook the spinach in water for 10 minutes. Drain off the water, add the butter, cook until tender, and chop. Add the cheese and the eggs, and bread crumbs enough to make a mixture sufficiently stiff to form into a roll, or leave more moist and cook in a baking dish.
Vegetable and Cheese Rolls.
For the spinach of the above recipe there may be substituted beet tops, Swiss chard, or the outer leaves of lettuce.
Cheese Used in the Stuffing of Meats.
The mixtures in the preceding two recipes may be used for stuffing veal or beef. Eggs may be added if desired, and chopped onions or parsley may be cooked with the greens. In Italy roasts thus prepared are sprinkled with a little finely chopped garlic, and covered with celery tops and thin slices of bacon or fat pork before roasting.
Creamed Cheese and Eggs. 3 hard boiled eggs. 1 tablespoonful of flour. 1 cupful of milk. 1/2 teaspoonful of salt.
Speck of cayenne. 1/4 cupful or 1 ounce grated cheese. 4 slices of toast.
Make a thin white sauce with the flour and milk and seasonings. Add the cheese and stir until melted.
Chop the whites and add them to the sauce. Pour the sauce over the toast, force the yolks through a potato ricer or strainer, sprinkle over the toast.
A cluster of meatless "roasts" built on the same principle: a moist, well-seasoned filling bound with grated cheese and bread crumbs, shaped into a loaf and browned. The technique is sound, but the quantities assume the cook will judge stiffness by hand.
- Oven heat"A moderate oven" corresponds to roughly 350F in period usage. The other recipes say only "brown in the oven," so any hotter finish is an editorial suggestion, not the book's instruction. The bean and spinach mixtures are already cooked, so the object is mainly to set the loaf and colour the outside — half an hour or so is usually enough.
- Basting with butter and waterThis is a period substitute for the pan drippings a meat roast would supply, and it matters more than it looks. Without it the crumb crust dries to sand; brush every 10 minutes with a few spoonfuls of melted butter loosened with an equal amount of hot water.
- Cheese quantitiesThe Boston Roast's cheese quantity has lost its fraction bar in printing; "12 pound" most plausibly stands for 1/2 pound, about 2 cups grated. A cup of grated firm cheese to a pound can of beans will also bind a roll, but that is a reduction, not what the text says.
- "Cream cheese, commercial or home made"In this period the phrase meant a fresh unripened curd cheese, closer to farmer cheese or a drained fromage blanc than to the stabilised block sold today. Modern block cream cheese works but is sweeter and much denser; drain a fresh ricotta or use farmer cheese for a closer result.
- Spinach volumeTwo quarts of raw spinach is a loose measure of leaves before wilting, on the order of 10 to 12 ounces, cooking down to roughly a cup packed. Squeeze it hard after chopping or the loaf will not stand.
- Eggs in the spinach rollThe method calls for eggs the ingredient list never mentions. Two beaten eggs to the quantity of spinach and cheese given here is a reasonable binding, and the stuffing note ("Eggs may be added if desired") suggests eggs were treated as optional at least there.
- BeansA pound can of kidney beans is about 1 1/2 cups drained; rinse well, since canning liquid will make the mixture too loose to roll. Cooked dried beans should be drained and left to steam dry before mashing.
- YieldEach roast makes a loaf serving four, or three as a main course. The creamed cheese and eggs on toast serves two generously, four as a light supper dish.
Vegetarian "roasts" of this kind were a fixture of American cookery writing from the 1890s onward, pushed along by the health-reform movement, wartime meat economy, and the new availability of canned beans and packaged grated cheese. The name Boston Roast is often said to point to the older association of Boston with baked beans, though that is folk explanation rather than established fact; the dish is essentially bean loaf dressed in the vocabulary of the Sunday joint, complete with basting and a gravy, so that a meatless meal could still be served in the shape the household expected. The note that in Italy such roasts were finished with garlic, celery tops and slices of fat pork is a glimpse of how American writers of the period borrowed selectively from immigrant kitchens, as passing detail and only as something foreigners did.