Beef Loaf
1½ pounds round steak
2 eggs
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1½ cups bread-crums
½ teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons salt
Chop the steak. Mix it thoroughly with the unbeaten eggs, bread-crums, chopped parsley , pepper and salt. Place in a breadpan and press firmly until it is molded to the shape of the pan.
Run a sharp thin knifeblade around the loaf, turn it out into a roasting-pan, place in a moderate oven and bake for about two hours, basting every quarter of an hour with hot stock. Cut in thin slices, and serve cold with horseradish. A hard-cooked egg may be molded in the center of the loaf to show prettily when sliced.
A lean cold-supper loaf from a period when "chop the steak" meant work with a knife or a hand-cranked grinder. The one thing to fix is the timing: two hours will dry out a loaf this size.
- Chop the steakThis is ground beef. Round steak run once through a coarse plate, or supermarket ground round, gives the same texture the original expects. Do not use a food processor to a paste; the loaf turns dense and rubbery.
- Moderate oven350F. The book assumes a range whose heat you judged by hand, so treat the number as the target and the thermometer as the authority.
- Time and temperatureA loaf of 1½ pounds reaches 160F in the center in roughly 55 minutes to an hour and a quarter, not two hours. Cook to temperature, not to the clock, or the lean round will be sawdust.
- Why the basting mattersRound steak has almost no fat and the recipe adds none. The quarter-hourly basting with hot stock is the only thing keeping the surface from hardening, so keep a cup or two of beef stock simmering and use it. Skipping it means adding fat instead.
- Bread-crumsProbably dry crumbs of the kind made from stale bread and sieved, though the book does not specify. Fresh soft crumbs absorb more liquid and will need less than 1½ cups; commercial dried crumbs work as written.
- The turning-out stepMolding in a bread pan and then unmolding into a roasting pan lets the sides brown and the basting reach all surfaces; a loaf left in its pan steams instead.
- Serving coldChill it thoroughly, ideally overnight, before slicing thin; warm meat loaf crumbles under a knife. Two teaspoons of salt is generous but not out of line for a loaf eaten cold, where seasoning reads flatter.
- The center eggHard-cook and peel the egg first, then bury it lengthwise in the middle of the mixture so slices from the center show a ring of yolk. Slices from the ends will not have it.
- YieldFour to six as a cold luncheon or supper dish with horseradish, bread and a salad.
Butterick, the dress-pattern company, published household compilations for much the same audience that bought its patterns and magazines: women running a house on a budget with an eye to appearances. That fits both halves of this recipe — round is an economical cut, and the hard-cooked egg molded in the middle exists so the slices "show prettily." Cold sliced meat loaf was common on the early-twentieth-century luncheon and Sunday-supper table, when a joint or loaf cooked once was expected to reappear cold, and horseradish was a usual sharp accompaniment to cold beef in Anglo-American cooking. The dish belongs to a long European tradition of bound chopped-meat loaves, generally traced to the same family as forcemeats and pâtés, though this version leans on breadcrumbs and egg rather than fat for its structure.