This Food in History #14 Meatloaf

Apr 15

Apr 15 This Food in History #14 Meatloaf

Hello and Welcome to This Food in History! This episode we are looking at a food that was one of my favorites growing up: Meatloaf. I was one of those kids that loved my mother’s recipe but didn’t like to order it anywhere else. We were a household that didn’t use the common topping of ketchup and I was pretty old before I learned that’s how other people bake it!

I think the most common version of meatloaf’s origins circles around the Great Depression in the States. The method of making it, which combines minced or ground meat, oats or breadcrumbs, spices, and egg, and ketchup is famously cheap and easy to make so a perfect type of meal for suffering Americans that couldn’t afford more choice meats or needed to use up all parts of the food they did have. I learned that around this time, meat grinders, invented by Karl Drais in the 19th Century made it much easier for meals like meatloaf, burgers, and meatballs as it was a staple appliance in American homes.

The dish then followed a similar apple pie route, which was gaining popularity and an American persona through patriotism for the War efforts. In the 1940s meatloaf was an emblem of wartime ingenuity; this was the era of Prudence Penny* “Vitality Loaf,” made with beef, pork and liver. The Culinary Arts Institute published a recipe for Savory Meat Loaf that called for beef, vegetable soup and cereal. A 1958 cookbook called “365 Ways to Cook Hamburger” had 70 recipes included just for methods to make meatloaf. We see it go from just a dish people made out of necessity to eventually being added to restaurant menus in diners, and then even more upscale ones by the 90s and ‘aughts when chefs like Gavin McMichael added it to the menu of his restaurant.

This isn’t the origin of meatloaf in the States though, it’s not even close to the origin of the dish as a whole.

The earliest known recipes and instances of a meatloaf like dish is in Ancient Rome during potentially 1st Century AD in a cookbook with an unknown author: Apicius. Early versions with the Romans use dried fruits, minced meat, and wine soaked breads. In the 4th and 5th centuries AD, we see it being made by the romans with animal brains and offal which is the collection of guts and meats. Spices and pine nuts finish off the taste in a dish, one source called pastez, which was in a patty shape instead of the modern loaf shape. It is believed that foods like this were good for the Roman military which then helped contribute to variations making its way to countries all over the world through migrations and conquests.

Medieval Europe also gets shoutouts for having variations of meatloaf, which seems to be a popular way to eat leftover cuts of meat and other perishables that need to be consumed and cannot be saved. We also now see regional differences. In Germany we see a popular method that includes an egg cooked in the center. Sweden’s variation is topped with a lingonberry sauce and served with potatoes. In the 1600s in the French countryside we see a terrine made with meats, including veal, pork, chicken, and rabbit, were finely chopped, creating a coarse texture bound together through fats and gelatin.

Germany gets the credit of bringing meatloaf to the States through the Pennsylvania Dutch immigrants. They had a dish called scrapple which used all parts of pork cooked with cornmeal and loaf shaped. It is still celebrated to this day in the community as there’s a Bridgeville Apple-Scrapple Festival. According to Food Historian Andew Smith, the first recipes from the States had the cook use whatever cold meat was available, and for New England was most likely to be beef. They had a practice to slaughter cows before winter and stretch the meat by using all parts of it. Pepper, salt, onion, and milk soaked bread and eggs were used with the meat, and you’ll find it very common today. Smith also shares that meatloaf was a breakfast dish not a dinner in those days This way people would get the energy they needed to start the work day. A Boston cooking school dropped a cookbook that used ground veal for the recipe and in the 1890s, industrial scale meatpacking allowed for scraps to be much more common and easier to get your hands on.

Now we’ve circled back to the Depression when meatloaf was just a great way to stretch perishable foods, and then a wartime emblem and more. Though around this time is when we are seeing the final ingredient that is a large part of modern American meatloaf. Ketchup.

Ketchup starts in China, as a fermented dish sauce that was common to Southern China. The sauce traveled through trade routes to Indonesia and the Philippines where they met the British and tomatoes from South America in the 1500s. Now it is used as a topper, baked into the loaf to create a glaze.

There isn’t much more to say about the humble meatloaf! This dish has maintained one important feature throughout all the centuries, its simple ability to take in leftovers and stretch them in a meal that fed many and used most things people had on hand in a tasty mixture. It can be eaten with potatoes, on bread or just straight. You can find variations all over the world as it turns out a minced meat patty or loaf is a super easy thing to invent over and over.

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