Fifty-Two Meat Loaves

by Michael McLaughlin

Fifty nostalgic photographs and tips for novices accompany recipes for a year's worth of meat loaves, one for every week, each paired with a tasty side dish. By the author of Back of the Box Gourmet. 50,000 first printing. Tour.

Genres: Cookbooks

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 4, 1993

Reviews

[Marvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book in a donation box and kept it long enough to read through it and copy a few recipes. I love meat loafs of all kinds. This particular book was published in 1997 but it has a great retro look of the 50s with it's illustrations and photos. A lot of the meat loaves are sort of retro; a basic interstate meat loaf and Ann Lander's favorite meatloaf are two examples. Others are fancier yet, being the 90s , they still sound a big old fashioned based on 21st century tastes. For instance one of the more upscale loafs is because it uses sun-dried tomatoes which I guess were consider upscale at the time. There are some nice varieties. There are a few non-red-meat types like chicken and salmon but no vegetarian varieties. Overall it would be a fun book for the meat loaf lover.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meatloaf is one of those dishes which divides people into two camps: those who find it the ultimate comfort food and those who can't abide it. As a permanent resident of the first camp, I NEEDED a cookbook devoted entirely to meatloaf. In order to reach his goal of a meatloaf a week for a year, McLaughlin stretched to include such things as a recipe for citified scrapple. I know how to make scrapple and it isn't with "mildly seasoned coarse-ground bulk pork sausage meat." The 1950s motif of this cookbook is campy and even fun but McLaughlin's attempts to be cute in his descriptions wear thinner than Milton Berle's one-liners. My tolerance expired on page 96 where he said "Studies have shown that if chimpanzees are dressed in frilly aprons and forced to bake the same meatloaf over and over again, they become violent and uncooperative." There are several useful ideas in this slim text. The blue-cheese-and-bacon mini loaf, the dressing-stuffed turkey loaf and the cornbread-encased Mexican meatloaf are all worth a try. Any book with a few good ideas is worth the five bucks I paid Powell's bookstore for a used copy of this one.