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Lentil and Potato Loaf
1 3/4 cups lentil puree 2 tablespoons butter 1/4 cup cream 1 teaspoon salt 1/3 teaspoon sage 2 cups riced potato 1 tablespoon butter To prepare the lentil, soak one cup of raw lentils over night. Then cook in boiling water until tender, which will usually require an hour or more. When almost done, allow the water to evaporate until the lentils are quite dry. Put them through a colander to form a puree. Then mix with the puree the butter, cream, salt and sage. To prepare the potatoes, peel and cook two or three medium sized potatoes in boiling, salted water until tender. Drain, and dry by shaking gently over the flame. Force through a ricer or colander, season with butter, and if necessary, additional salt. Place the lentil mixture in the bottom of a buttered baking dish or pan, and on top of this place a layer of the mashed potato. Brush the top with a little cream or melted butter, and bake until nicely browned.
A straightforward two-layer bake that reads like a vegetarian shepherd's pie. The original leaves out oven temperature and time, so those are the main gaps to fill.
- Oven and timeBake at 375F for 25-35 minutes, until the potato top is browned and the lentil layer is heated through. Both layers are already cooked, so this stage is purely about browning and setting.
- Lentil quantityOne cup of dry lentils yields roughly the 1 3/4 cups of puree called for. Brown or green lentils hold their flavour better here than red, which collapse to mush and thin out.
- Soaking is optionalThe overnight soak is not needed with modern packaged lentils, whatever the state of the bulk-bin stock a 1910s cook bought. Unsoaked brown lentils simmer tender in 25-35 minutes, well under the hour the recipe allows.
- Drying the pureeThis is the hinge. If the lentils go in wet the loaf will not hold a cut edge, so cook off the liquid until the mass mounds on a spoon before you add butter and cream.
- Ricing, not mashingA ricer or the back of a sieve gives the dry, fluffy potato the top layer needs. A food processor develops the starch into glue and will not brown properly.
- Sage measureA third of a teaspoon most likely means dried, rubbed sage, which is a strong, slightly medicinal seasoning against lentils. Start there and taste before baking; if using fresh, about a teaspoon chopped fine.
- Colander as sieve"put them through a colander" here means pressing the cooked lentils through the perforations with a spoon. A medium mesh sieve does the same job and will also hold back the skins, which a wide-holed colander mostly will not.
- YieldAbout four servings from a small loaf pan or a 1-quart baking dish. It slices better after ten minutes' rest out of the oven.
Meatless Cookery belongs to a wave of American cookbooks published around the First World War, when meat was scarce and expensive and "meat substitute" cookery moved from vegetarian and Seventh-day Adventist circles into mainstream household advice. The organizing idea of that period was protein arithmetic: a legume, a nut or a cheese was proposed as a direct substitute for a chop, and the dish was often shaped in a loaf pan precisely so it could be sliced and served in the position a roast would occupy on the plate. Lentils suited the argument well, being cheap, storable dry, and substantial in protein. The butter, cream and riced potato here do a second job beyond richness, since a lentil puree alone has no gluten or egg to bind it and would otherwise fall apart under the knife.