THE GREAT MEAT BALL ERA
Autolycus
The Great Meat Ball Era By AUTOLYCUS SHOULD some realist ever come to write about the closing years of World War II, I offer him this title for his social glimpse at 1045. It is the Spring of the...
...The other day our own hamburg arrived so white with fat that in an Artemus Ward mood, I got "sarcastikul" and told our butcher that I intended to stick a wick in a cake of it and use it as a night light...
...Some years ago, while my wife and I were staying at our camp, living on a good camp diet of scrambled eggs, luncheon macaroni, canned tomatoes, bacon rashers and so on, we both of us, one evening, began to feel particularly low in spirits...
...While we were thus, so to speak, waiting for the end, a cheerful friend brought us up a pound of hamburg on which we both presently made an excellent meal...
...To my mind, the best thing to do is to cook it plain, and keep what meat flavor there happened to be...
...A quiescent, deepening melancholy had hold of us both...
...Do I view the world as a vale of tears...
...This ur-hamburg had been prepared in the nearby city...
...No, reverend sir, not I"—not after that hamburg...
...How did the stuff get its name...
...America is living on it, and suburbia has had little else for months...
...And let the juice on the bottom of the pan cook to a brown...
...Or a solid bolus of ground meat and poultry dressing...
...What gave it its flavor I do not know...
...Cook It Plain I do not decry this universal fare...
...The sauce should not be too thick, and the flavor ought not to antagonize the flavors of the vegetables to served...
...There are any number of variations...
...Soul Of The Sauce When the meat is done, take out the cakes and keop them hot...
...Glooms rolled away, the melancholy dissolved like fog in a bright sun, our spirits returned, our voices came to life again, and I think we ended with a post-prandial jig...
...By "meat ball" I no longer mean the Swedish or Italian kind prepared with a little addition of chopped pork, bread crumbs, and spices, but the basic hamburg meat ball as it is now sizzling in fry pans in 30 million homes...
...I suppose so, and somewhere...
...We do not broil our meat, though broiling is excellent over a wood fire, but use an iron fry pan which is first lightly greased and then allowed to get hot...
...a gravy ). Any outside flavor should be in this sauce, and it should not be too strong...
...A good basic flavor like meat or coffee does not die of familiarity...
...We keep the cakes on the small side, for giant meat balls are horrible...
...Did the sometime Inhabitants of Hamburg feast on it, and did some Hamburg burgher bring the tradition to the United States...
...Pat the meat together, salt and pepper generously both sides of the cakes, don't use a gooey egg, and let the hamburg sizzle and brown...
...Somehow or other, the sawdust had all run out of the family doll...
...But something of us, the body with its own complex of separate will, did feel a need, and tried to tell us so...
...We had not felt any need of meat...
...Most of them are pretty grim to my mind...
...Anyway, good luck with the meat bails, and b'yosh, here's the grocer now 1...
...It had been chopped rather than ground, and came to the grocery in a flatish box about a foot and a half long by a foot wide...
...Hamburg" can be "dolled-up" in any number of ways but somehow it is always hamburg...
...You can use a bit of tomato paste, a bit of sauted onion, a few drops of garlic vinegar or some other herb vinegar, the liquid from frash tomatoes, or even a bit of currant jelly...
...But keep what meat flavor you can in the ment it is best in the long run...
...in no other nation do you find such a cheap and universal meat for everybody...
...To this chopped and prepared hamburg presently succeeded the local butcher's own tray of machine-ground meat made from the day's usable leftovers and cheap cuts...
...It is a social phenomenon as well as a culinary one, and historians would do well to begin taking notes...
...And this is a hamburg crosscountry run over the hills and far-away...
...In the East, culinary tradition records that "hamburg" was first heard of about the turn of the century, and I can remember "going to the store" for it about that time...
...I hesitate to describe so low and animal a change, but you should have seen what happened...
...Meat loaves are another matter...
...That white enamel dish with the rounded cords of meat and fat is very characteristic of America...
...is there somewhere in the cosmos a recipe for meat loaf which is not a ca.che .if meat, of American blotting-paper bread, and blockest onions...
...It is the Spring of the meat ball, it is going to be the Summer of the meat ball, and it is possibly going to be the Autumn and early Winter of the vanishing meat ball or the no meat ball at all...
...If you have an herb-garden, you can use chives, a few leaves of tarragon, or what have you...
...Next pour some water into the sizzling pan, let it color and flavor itself from the cooked juice, add a little flour, salt and pepper to taste, a few drops of vin- egar, and work up a simple tasty sauce (not...
...The meat was a curious bright red, and I remember that the stuff was quite good eating...
...Hamburg...
...There used to be 2 grades and prices, and depending upon what the butcher used each could be pretty good or rather awful...
...anyhow, I've never had anything quite like it since...
Vol. 9 • May 1945 • No. 19
