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Baked Hamburg Steak
1½ pounds beef round
2 cups bread soaked in milk
1 small onion
4 hard-cooked eggs
1 cup tomatoes
1 tablespoon butter
½ cup sliced onion
2 eggs
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 meatloaf rolled around a line of hard-cooked eggs, in the style of the German falscher Hase. The original gives neither oven temperature nor cooking time, so both need supplying.
- Oven and timeBake at 350F. A roll made with 1½ lb of meat takes about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes; cook to an internal temperature of 160F at the thickest part, avoiding the egg core when you probe.
- "Chop the meat fine"Period recipes often still call for hand-chopping, whether or not a grinder was in the kitchen. Buy 1½ lb ground round, or grind chuck if you want a moister loaf — round alone is lean and can bake dry.
- Bread soaked in milkTwo cups means two cups of bread, not crumbs — roughly four slices of stale white bread, torn up and covered with milk. Squeeze out the excess before mixing or the roll will not hold its shape.
- GingerGround dried ginger, not fresh, and used with a light hand — about ¼ teaspoon. Ginger turns up as a seasoning for chopped meat in some recipes of the period; it reads as warm rather than spicy.
- The egg corePeel the hard-cooked eggs, trim a sliver from each end so they sit flush, and lay them in a line down the centre of the flattened meat. Seal the seam well; a gap lets the sauce in and the roll breaks apart when sliced.
- The sauceOne cup of tomatoes most likely means canned tomatoes with their juice. The water is unmeasured — start with about a cup, enough to keep a shallow pool in the pan for basting, and add more if it cooks away.
- Resting and slicingLet the roll stand ten minutes before cutting or the slices fall open around the eggs. Cut thick, about an inch, so each round shows a whole cross-section of yolk.
- YieldSix servings, or four generous ones. It slices better cold than hot and makes good sandwiches the next day.
"Hamburg steak" in American cookbooks of this period meant seasoned chopped beef generally, not a patty in a bun; the name is usually associated with Hamburg and its emigrant traffic, though the precise route into American usage is not firmly documented. This particular treatment, a chopped-meat loaf rolled around whole hard-cooked eggs and baked, resembles the German falscher Hase or "false hare"; the loaf-imitating-roast-game explanation of the name is traditional rather than established. The Butterick book appeared when the pattern company was publishing household guides alongside its dress patterns, and its meat section is full of these economical extenders — bread soaked in milk, a small amount of round doing the work of a roast.