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Meat Loaf (Mrs F B Wilson lb ground beef)
Mrs. F. B. Wilson. 1 lb. ground beef ½ lb. sausage 1 egg 1/2 C milk Salt to taste ½ Coatmeal Little chopped green pepper 1 onion chopped Cover with tomatoes and bake 3/4 of an hour.
A community-cookbook loaf written in shorthand for cooks who already knew what a meat loaf was: no pan size, no oven temperature, no yield. The proportions are sound, but a few of the abbreviations need untangling.
- Read the typography"½ Coatmeal" is ½ cup oatmeal, the C standing for cup as it does in the milk line. Rolled oats, not steel-cut or instant, and they soften in the milk as the loaf bakes.
- The sausage is bulk, not links1½ lb sausage here means fresh bulk pork sausage meat, sold loose or in a chub, usually already salted and often seasoned with sage and pepper. Go easy on the added salt until you have tasted a small fried-off sample of the mix.
- Meat ratioAt 1 lb beef to 1½ lb sausage this is more pork than beef, which makes it richer and moister than a modern all-beef loaf. Reversing the proportions gives a leaner, firmer loaf if that suits better.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A loaf of this type belongs in a moderate oven, 350F.
- Time and donenessThree-quarters of an hour is unlikely to cook 2½ lb of raw pork and beef through in a deep loaf pan. Expect 1 to 1¼ hours, and go by an instant-read thermometer in the centre: 160F. Shaping it free-form on a shallow baking sheet cooks faster and browns better than a narrow loaf tin.
- "Cover with tomatoes"Either sliced fresh tomatoes laid over the top or canned tomatoes broken up with their juice; the recipe does not say which. They keep the surface from drying and reduce to a rough sauce in the pan. Drain some of the liquid off if you want a browned crust rather than a braised top.
- YieldTwo and a half pounds of meat serves six to eight.
Community cookbooks of the early twentieth century are full of meat loaves, and this one shows why: it stretches a pound of beef with cheaper sausage, a half cup of oats and a cup's worth of milk and egg into a dish for eight, and it is almost entirely unattended once it goes in the oven. Oats were cheap, and they absorb fat and juices without going pasty. The recipe's telegraphic style is also typical of the genre, where contributors like Mrs. F. B. Wilson wrote down only what a neighbour would not already know, leaving oven heat, pan and quantity to common sense. Attaching a name to each entry was characteristic of these books: many were fundraisers.