Meat Loaf
Chop fine whatever cold meat you may have, fat and lean together; add pepper and salt, one finely chopped onion, two slices of bread which have been soaked in milk, and one egg.
Mix well together and bake in a form. This makes an admirable tea or breakfast dish.-Mrs. J.
A leftovers recipe rather than a formula, so the quantities are left entirely to the cook. Assume roughly a pound to a pound and a half of cooked meat as the working scale.
- ProportionsFor about 1 lb of chopped cooked meat, two slices of milk-soaked bread and one egg is right. If the mixture will not hold together in a ball when squeezed, add a second egg rather than more bread, which dilutes the flavour.
- Cold cooked meat, not rawThis is built on already-roasted or boiled meat, so it is closer to a pâté or a rissole mixture than to modern ground-beef meat loaf. Raw ground meat needs a much longer bake and a different liquid balance.
- "Bake in a form"A form is a mould or tin. A standard loaf pan, well greased, is the direct equivalent; line it with parchment if the meat is lean and likely to stick.
- Oven and timeThe book assumes you know your own oven. Bake at 350F for 45 minutes to an hour, until the centre reaches 165F and the top has browned. Cooked meat only needs heating through and setting, so do not push it further or it dries out.
- Chop, do not puréeChopping fine by knife or through a coarse grinder plate keeps some texture. A food processor will turn cold roast into paste in seconds; pulse briefly if you use one.
- The breadSqueeze the soaked bread only lightly. The retained milk is one of the few sources of moisture, along with the egg, the onion and the meat's own fat, which may be why the recipe specifies fat and lean together.
- SeasoningCold meat tastes flat, and salt and pepper alone are thin by current standards. Taste a spoonful of the raw mixture cooked briefly in a pan before committing the whole loaf; mustard, thyme or a little of the original gravy all suit it.
- Yield and servingA 1 lb loaf serves four. It slices most neatly once fully cold, though the recipe does not say whether it was meant hot or cold, and it holds three or four days refrigerated.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housewives, is full of these short unmeasured entries signed with an initial, which is how recipes actually circulated among households before standardised cups and spoons took hold. This one belongs to the large nineteenth-century family of made dishes: ways of turning Sunday's roast into Tuesday's supper, alongside hashes, croquettes and potted meats. That it is recommended as a tea or breakfast dish rather than a dinner course reflects an older meal pattern in which the substantial hot meat came at midday dinner, and the lighter meals leaned on cold sliced things prepared in advance. The name meat loaf attached itself firmly to raw-ground-beef versions only later, as home meat grinders and then packaged ground beef became common in American kitchens.