Meatloaf

Ground beef, often cut with pork or veal, bound with egg and soaked bread, seasoned with onion and herbs, packed into a loaf and baked under a glaze of ketchup or tomato until it holds a slice: meatloaf is the American weeknight dinner that every family makes differently and that diners sell by the thick slab with mashed potato and gravy. It is a descendant of the German Hackbraten and the Scandinavian meat cakes that immigrants brought in the nineteenth century, and it became a national dish during the Depression, when stretching a pound of meat with breadcrumbs and oats fed a family. The first American recipes appear in the 1870s, after the home meat grinder arrived; the ketchup glaze is a twentieth-century addition. Relatives include the Italian-American polpettone, the Belgian vleesbrood and the Turkish dalyan köfte, which hides whole eggs in the middle.