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Vegetarian Loaf
2 cups white breadcrumbs 1 cup milk 2 cups pecan nuts or English walnuts 2 beaten eggs teaspoonful salt 1 teaspoonful poultry dressing ½ cup melted butter Pepper and celery salt Soak bread-crumbs in milk and eggs. Put nuts through meat grinder, but do not use finest cutter, as they should not be as fine as meal. Mix with crumbs, milk, eggs, and seasoning. Grease oblong bread-pan and put in mixture, pouring a little melted butter over top. Bake half an hour, basting often with butter. Turn out on platter and serve hot, or slice cold. Use parsley for garnish.
WHAT TO DO WITH BITS OF CHEESE Cheese is an excellent accompaniment to many made-over dishes, particularly to starchy foods and those lacking fat, as it adds both flavor and food value. Being a concentrated food, a little of it goes a long way, so there is no excuse for the least particle being wasted. When cheese comes from the store it should be wrapped in a clean cloth and kept in a cool, dry place. If the cloth is moistened with vinegar this will retard the formation of mold. Grate all the little dry pieces as they accumulate, and put in a covered glass jar. It is well to keep a jar or two of Parmesan cheese, which comes grated, always on hand to help out.
Care must be taken not to overcook cheese, as this renders it indigestible. When it is to be added to a hot mixture let this be done, whenever possible, just before taking from the fire. Cheesed Rice No. 1 Put in a double boiler or chafing-dish two cups of cold boiled rice and a scant half cup of hot milk, and heat thoroughly over water. Then sprinkle lightly over it half a cup of grated cheese and a few shreds of pimento. Cover tightly and let stand over the hot water until the cheese is melted. This is acceptable for Sunday tea.
Cheesed Rice No. 2 Take half a cup of rice. Take any odds and ends of dry cheese too small to grate and melt them in the oven, seasoning with salt, pepper, and a little mixed mustard. Turn the rice out on a hot platter, place three or four poached eggs on top, and pour the melted cheese over.
A nut loaf of the sort that stood in for meat on meatless days, bound with bread and egg rather than with flour or grain. It needs an oven temperature the original never states.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; a loaf of this kind wants a moderate oven, around 350F. Half an hour should suit an ordinary oblong bread-pan; check that the centre is set and the top firm.
- Quantities as printedThe milk and poultry dressing both read 1, as checked against the printed page. The salt line carries no number; read it as 1 teaspoonful, adjusted to taste, since the celery salt adds more.
- Poultry dressingThis means poultry seasoning, the dry blend of sage, thyme, marjoram and often savory sold for stuffing. If you have none, use about 3/4 teaspoon dried sage with 1/4 teaspoon thyme.
- Grinding the nutsThe warning about the finest cutter is the hinge of the recipe. Nuts taken to a meal release their oil and the loaf turns greasy and pasty; you want a coarse, crumbly grind. A food processor works if you pulse rather than run it, stopping while there are still visible pieces.
- Soaking the crumbsUse dry or stale white crumbs, not fresh soft ones, or the mixture will be too wet to slice. Let them stand in the milk and egg ten minutes before mixing in the nuts.
- BastingBasting a loaf in a pan is really just brushing more butter over the exposed top to keep it from drying. Two or three applications during the half hour is enough; reserve a couple of tablespoons of the melted butter for this.
- YieldAbout six servings hot, or eight to ten slices cold. It slices more cleanly once thoroughly cold, which is presumably why the original allows for slicing it that way.
Nut loaves like this one belong to the wave of American vegetarian cookery that came out of the late nineteenth-century health-reform movement and its sanitarium kitchens, where ground nuts and bread were assembled into something that could be carved and served on a platter in the place of a roast. Its appearance in a left-overs book is a matter of thrift rather than principle: a loaf that turns two cups of dry crumbs into a dish substantial enough to garnish with parsley and set before guests was exactly the kind of economy these books were written to teach.