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Nut Roast
1/2 cup lentils. 1/2 cup shelled roasted peanuts 1/2 cup toasted bread crumbs 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 saltspoon pepper Milk Soak the lentils over night; in the morning drain, cover with fresh water and bring to a boil. Drain again; put in fresh water and cook until tender. Drain once more; throw away the water and press the lentils through a colander. To them add the nuts, either ground or chopped, the bread crumbs and seasoning and milk sufficient to make the mixture the consistency of mush. Put into a greased baking dish; bake in a moderate oven for an hour; turn out on a heated platter; garnish with parsley or watercress and serve.
A plain lentil-and-peanut loaf of the sort that filled the meat-substitute chapter of pre-war American cookbooks. It is forgiving, but the seasoning and the moisture level are entirely in the cook's hands.
- The missing quantityThe method depends on soaked, boiled, sieved lentils, but no amount is given in the ingredients. For the half-cup each of peanuts and crumbs listed, about 1 cup of dry lentils (roughly 2 1/2 cups cooked) gives a loaf that holds together; treat this as a judgment call rather than a stated measure.
- Moderate oven350F. An hour at that heat sets the loaf through and dries the surface enough that it will turn out cleanly.
- A saltspoonAbout 1/4 teaspoon. Half a saltspoon is therefore a pinch, and this mixture will take considerably more pepper than that without complaint.
- Consistency of mushThick porridge that mounds on a spoon and does not run. Too much milk and the loaf will not unmould; too little and it bakes dry and crumbly.
- Skip the colanderPressing cooked lentils through a colander was the period's way of making a puree. A food mill, potato masher or a few pulses in a processor does the same in a fraction of the time. Leave some texture.
- The double drainDiscarding the soaking water and the first boiling water was often recommended, sometimes on the grounds that it made pulses easier to digest. It also washes away flavour, so season the final mixture assertively: parsley, thyme, a little onion softened in butter, or a spoonful of soy.
- PeanutsRoasted salted peanuts will push the loaf past palatable; use unsalted, and chop rather than grind if you want the nuts to register at all.
- Turning outLet the dish stand five to ten minutes out of the oven before inverting. Straight from the heat the loaf is fragile and will collapse on the platter.
- YieldProbably about four modest servings as a main dish, depending on how much lentil you use. A brown gravy or tomato sauce is a welcome addition.
Meat substitutes had their own chapter in American cookbooks by the early twentieth century, driven less by vegetarian conviction than by economy, Seventh-day Adventist and health-reform cookery, and later by wartime meat conservation. Nut loaves of this kind -- pulse puree bound with crumbs and enriched with ground nuts -- were a standard form: they mimicked the shape and the carving of a meat loaf, which mattered a good deal at a table where the roast was the visual centre of dinner. Peanuts were the cheapest nut widely available in the United States, and pulses were cooked down and sieved in keeping with the period's general preference for smooth, easily digested food.