Home › Vegetarian Dishes › Cottage-Cheese and Peanut Loaf
Cottage-Cheese and Peanut Loaf
1/2 cup peanuts 1 cup cottage cheese 1 cup cold, cooked rolled oats 1 cup milk 1 egg, slightly beaten 1 tablespoon fat 1/2 teaspoon salt Dash of pepper 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning Few drops Worcestershire sauce 1 tablespoon chopped onion Chop peanuts and add to other ingredients in order given. When thoroughly combined, place in a well-oiled bread-tin. Bake in a moderate oven (350 degrees F.) until brown. Serve hot with tomato sauce.
A meatless loaf of the sort that filled the vegetarian pages of interwar cookbooks. The mixture is wet by design, and how you handle the oats and the pan decides whether it slices or spoons.
- The hinge: cold cooked oatsThe oats are cooked as porridge (roughly 1/2 cup dry rolled oats to 1 cup water gives about the 1 cup called for) and then cooled, as the recipe specifies. Cooling helps the mixture hold together; warm oatmeal will make an already wet batter looser still.
- Baking timeThe original gives a temperature but no duration. In a standard loaf tin at 350F, expect 45 to 60 minutes -- the top should be well browned and the centre set, not liquid, when tested with a knife.
- Cottage cheesePeriod cottage cheese was generally a plain drained curd rather than today's creamed tubs, and often made from soured milk. Dry-curd or small-curd cheese is the closer match; draining modern creamed cottage cheese in a sieve for 15 minutes will keep the batter from being too loose.
- PeanutsUnsalted roasted peanuts, chopped fairly fine but not to a paste. If you use salted, cut the added salt to a pinch.
- The tablespoon of fatMelt it before adding, whether butter, oil or shortening. Cold solid fat stirred into a cool mixture stays in lumps.
- Pan and turning outA 8 x 4 inch tin works; oil it generously as directed, or line it with parchment. Let the loaf rest 10 minutes before turning out, otherwise it breaks.
- Poultry seasoningA sage-and-thyme blend, and the source of the loaf's roast-dinner flavour. If you have none, use about 1/2 teaspoon dried sage with a pinch each of thyme and marjoram.
- YieldThe quantities make a small loaf, enough for about four as a main course with tomato sauce, or more if sliced cold. Cold slices firm up and can be pan-fried.
Nut and cheese loaves were a mainstay of American vegetarian cookery from the 1890s through the 1930s, associated in particular with the Seventh-day Adventist health-reform kitchens around Battle Creek and later taken up in mainstream household magazines. Such dishes doubled as thrift dishes: peanuts, oats and cottage cheese delivered protein far more cheaply than a roast. The poultry seasoning and tomato sauce are the tell -- the loaf is shaped, seasoned and served in the idiom of meat, which is how meatless cooking was made palatable to families who did not think of themselves as vegetarians at all.