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Spiced Beef
Mrs. E. R. Harmon.
Four pounds of round of beef chopped fine; take from it all fat; add to it three dozen small crackers rolled fine, four eggs, one cup of milk, one tablespoon ground mace, two tablespoons of black pepper, one tablespoon melted butter; mix well and put in any tin pan that it will just fill, packing it well; baste with butter and water, and bake two hours in a slow oven.
This is a baked, pressed beef loaf of the sort meant to be cooled and sliced thin for supper or sandwiches rather than served hot in wedges. Two things need attention before you start: the seasoning is out of proportion to modern palates, and there is no salt in the list at all.
- Slow ovenRead this as 300F. At that temperature a four-pound loaf will take the full two hours; pull it at an internal temperature of 160F rather than by the clock.
- Three dozen small crackers"Small crackers" of the period were probably soda or butter crackers a couple of inches across, though sizes are not recorded with any precision. Three dozen come out to somewhere between 4 and 6 ounces, or roughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups of fine crumbs. Weigh rather than count, since modern cracker sizes vary wildly.
- The pepper and maceTwo tablespoons of black pepper and one of mace in four pounds of meat is aggressive even for a dish intended to be eaten cold, when seasoning reads flatter. A teaspoon or two of each is closer to modern taste; the original amount is not dangerous, only very hot and very perfumed.
- No saltThe recipe omits it entirely, for reasons the text does not explain. Add about 2 teaspoons of fine salt to four pounds of meat, or the loaf will taste dull however much pepper is in it.
- Round of beef, chopped fineRound is very lean, and the instruction to remove all fat leaves nothing to keep the loaf moist. Ground round or 90 percent lean beef works; if you want it less dry, use chuck or add a few ounces of ground pork.
- Packing the panThe hinge of the dish. It should fill the tin exactly and be pressed in hard, with no air pockets, so it holds together as a sliceable block when cold. This quantity will overflow a standard 9x5 loaf pan, so use a larger tin or divide it between two.
- Basting with butter and waterSpoon a mixture of melted butter and hot water over the top every 30 minutes. In a lean loaf baked uncovered this is what keeps the surface from cracking and drying; foil over the top for the first hour does much the same work.
- Yield and servingFour pounds of meat plus crackers and eggs makes a substantial loaf serving 10 to 12. Cool it in the pan, weight it with a plate and a tin, refrigerate overnight, and slice thin.
"Spiced beef" covered a wide range of dishes in Victorian American cookery, from a whole brisket cured with saltpetre and spice to a chopped and baked loaf like this one, and the name often attached to the seasoning rather than to any particular method. This version belongs to the second tradition: a forcemeat of minced beef bound with cracker crumbs, egg and milk, pressed into a tin and baked slowly, then cooled and cut cold. Recipes of the type are often treated as forerunners of the American meat loaf, and they earned their place in household books because they turned cheap lean round into something that would slice neatly for a cold table or a lunch pail. Like most of *The Home Cook Book*, compiled from contributions by Chicago and other American housewives in the 1870s, the recipe carries a contributor's name and assumes a great deal of unstated skill, including how much salt to add and how hot a "slow oven" ran in her own stove.