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Baked Hamburg Steak
1 1/2 pounds beef round 2 cups bread soaked in milk 1 small onion 1 tablespoon butter 2 eggs 4 hard-cooked eggs 1 cup tomatoes 1/2 cup sliced onion Salt, pepper, ginger Chop the meat fine. Add the bread, one minced onion, seasonings to taste and the two uncooked eggs, well beaten. Arrange the hard-cooked eggs end to end across the middle of the meat and roll the meat mixture around them. Place the roll in a baking-pan, pour over it a sauce composed of the tomatoes, sliced onions, butter and water, and bake, basting frequently with sauce. In serving, slice the roll crosswise. The hard-cooked eggs may be omitted.
A stuffed meat roll of the kind that turns up in American cookbooks between the wars, baked under a rough tomato sauce rather than served as patties. The original assumes you know your own oven, so a few numbers need filling in.
- Oven and timeNo temperature is given: bake at 350F. A roll made from 1 1/2 pounds of meat needs roughly an hour, and should reach 160F at the centre — check away from the hard-cooked eggs, which will read cooler.
- "Chop the meat fine"This is ground round, and it would often have been ground to order. Buy coarse-ground beef round or grind cubed round yourself; pre-packed lean ground beef works but binds more tightly.
- The soaked breadTwo cups most likely means bread measured after tearing rather than fine crumbs. Use stale white bread, cover with milk until soft, then squeeze out most of the liquid before mixing or the roll will not hold its shape.
- Water in the sauceThe amount is left to the cook. About a cup, with the cup of tomatoes and the sliced onion called for, gives enough liquid to baste with for an hour without the pan going dry; add more partway if it reduces too far.
- GingerGround ginger turns up in savoury meat mixtures in period cookery and is meant as a background note, not a flavour you can name — a scant quarter teaspoon for this quantity.
- Building the rollPat the mixture into a rectangle on parchment or a damp cloth, lay the peeled eggs end to end down the centre, then lift the edges up and seal firmly along the seam and both ends. Bake seam side down so it does not open.
- Resting and slicingLet it stand ten minutes before cutting, or the slices fall apart and the egg pushes out. Cut crosswise about 3/4 inch thick to show the ring of yolk.
- YieldServes six generously, and the cold slices are good the next day.