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Celery, Nut and Potato Loaf
2 large stalks celery
1 egg
¾ cup chopped nuts
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups mashed potatoes
½ teaspoon paprika
3 tablespoons fat
2 teaspoons grated onion
Wash, cut in small pieces and cook the celery in a small amount of boiling salted water until it is tender. Drain off liquid. (This may be used for soup stock later.) Then add the other ingredients in the order in which they are given. Combine them carefully, pack in a loaf in a well-oiled bread-pan, and bake in a moderate oven (350° F.) for thirty-five minutes. Serve with tomato sauce.
An adequate protein is needed as accompaniment to this dish.
A straightforward vegetable loaf that depends entirely on how dry the potato is — wet mash will not hold a slice. Two points of period vocabulary need translating before you start.
- "2 large stalks celery"In American usage of this period a "stalk" of celery often meant the whole head, what we now call a bunch; individual ribs were sometimes called "branches." Two whole heads gives several cups diced, which is proportionate to 3 cups of potato. Two single ribs would be lost in the loaf.
- Fat"3 tablespoons fat" means butter, lard, or vegetable shortening, whichever the household had. Butter or a neutral oil both work; the fat is there for richness and to keep the loaf from drying, so do not cut it.
- NutsUnspecified. Walnuts and peanuts were both common in meatless cookery of the period; walnuts give the most savory result, peanuts the most protein. Chop them to about the size of peas so they read as texture rather than gravel.
- The mashed potatoThe hinge of the dish. Use potatoes mashed dry with no milk or cream added, and let the cooked celery drain thoroughly. Excess moisture is the difference between a loaf that slices and a pan of hot potato.
- OvenThe 350°F given here is already modern and needs no conversion. Thirty-five minutes sets the egg and browns the top; an extra ten minutes will give you a firmer crust for slicing.
- Pan and turning outA standard 9 x 5-inch loaf pan, well greased. Let the loaf stand five to ten minutes out of the oven before inverting, or it will break along the middle.
- Yield and servingAbout six servings as a main course. The tomato sauce is not optional in spirit — the loaf is mild and starchy and wants the acid.
- That last sentence"An adequate protein is needed as accompaniment" reflects the nutritional thinking of the day, which did not count the protein in nuts and potatoes as sufficient on its own. Serve it with beans, cheese, or eggs if you want to follow the book.
Butterick, a pattern company, published household books aimed at ordinary middle-class kitchens, and a "Vegetarian Dishes" section appears in one, drawing on the meatless cooking that had taken root in health-reform sanatoriums and food-reform societies in the late nineteenth century. The nut loaf was its signature form: chopped nuts bound with a starch and an egg, baked in a bread pan and sliced like a joint, so that the meal kept the shape of a meat dinner without the meat. The anxious closing note about "an adequate protein" is the most period-specific thing on the page — protein was the nutrient of the hour in early twentieth-century home economics, counted and worried over, and a dish built on potatoes and celery had to be defended.