welcome friends welcome back to the
kitchen welcome back to sunday morning
in the old cookbook show today we're
going to do something out of this little
pamphlet cookbook sent in by a viewer
thank you very much for sending this to
us it's called mexican cookery for
american homes
published by
gerbhart
san antonio texas now this is from 1923.
gebhardt's eagle chili powder so gaba
hearts is a is a food company from texas
uh that started out making chili powder
and then morphed into a company that
made into the 1930s all kinds of canned
goods
and even in this time frame they made a
lot of canned goods
canned beans
they've got something here
gebhard's spaghetti and chili and so
they've mixed spaghetti
with um chili con carne in a can
uh sounds really good to me i
think that sounds a lot like cincinnati
chili
if you were to ask me but
maybe you didn't ask me
they also have
canned beans and all kinds of things
they make their own tabasco sauce
here on the back cover they've got
gebhard's original mexican dinner
package and so it's an entire
mexican dinner
in a box
for one dollar and so you get a can of
chili con carne can of mexican style
beans a can of chuck wrapped tamales two
cans of deviled sandwich spread pate
and a bottle of eagle chili powder um
and it's you know it's also packaged in
a beautifully colored souvenir box
so this is a major company in this time
period in texas
that gains distribution across the
united states and internationally and at
one point even here in canada they had
distribution and so they're using this
cookbook to let the rest of the united
states know
about the products and how to integrate
their mexican products into your daily
meal and
we're going to make
the chili meatloaf today
essentially
just a meatloaf
flavored with chili powder so in this
bowl i have ground beef to that i'm
going to add ground pork
and it asks for ground up smoked ham
um
i've never had this
smoked ham
in a meatloaf before the ham is kind of
interesting to me i've never seen it
before in a meatloaf kind of interested
to see where this is going
asks for crushed up crackers so i just
took some soda crackers put them into a
food processor whiz them down fairly
fine
salt now
the recipe is slightly confusing because
salt shows up twice
it shows up in one column as one
teaspoon of salt and in the second
column as two teaspoons of salt
i'm not sure how much salt really to put
in so
salt to taste
i've got about a teaspoon
we'll see where that gets us
minced onion it asks for two tablespoons
of minced onion
i just found the smallest onion i had in
my fridge and minced that up to put it
in
then it asks for
a button
of garlic i have never heard of a clove
of garlic called a button before
so where you live what would you call a
clove of garlic do you call it a button
i've i've never heard of that so i'm
going to crush that
in it says one or two
actually it doesn't say one or two there
was a time not that long ago
here in the 1920s for instance
where
printing didn't use a slash
for a half or a quarter or third
it was a one and then a dash and then
two and today we would say that as you
can get one to two one or two
not half but it is it is half
and that changed at some point i don't
know exactly when that changed to the
slash
but you see this a lot in older
cookbooks um and it can throw you
because you look at it you go
one to two or one to two pounds of and
it can be confusing it's half
next is the gebhard's
chili powder now
not a brand that's available here in
canada it is a brand that is still
available um it's a brand that's been
sold
uh between the family sold it to a big
conglomerate and then big conglomerates
have sort of passed it around over the
years
i think now it is owned by
conagra
but apparently it is a shadow of its
former self and it only makes one or two
products and they don't make them
in the same place in texas anymore
it asks for
six drops of tabasco sauce initially i
thought tabasco sauce louisiana tabasco
sauce but no they made their own tabasco
sauce in a different style
in texas using mexican peppers so i've
got a i've got a mexican made chili
habanero sauce
it says six drops
that's not a lot six drops isn't a lot
i'll give it a couple of squirts and see
where we got
let's call that six drops
yeah okay that was definitely more than
six drops um
i'll be okay i kind of like things hot
and
two eggs so
get these two eggs in and then i'm just
gonna mix it up with my hands a very
simple process
of mixing with your hands
i've seen people mix it in a stand mixer
with a paddle attachment
i don't get worked up about using my
hands to mix food
but wait i almost forgot
half a cup of milk
call that half a cup
now we'll mix this together
now it says to mold it into a loaf form
and then put it into a greased baker and
i have to assume that that's a
loaf pan a greased baking pan
and i don't know why you would shape it
into a loaf and then put it in the pan
why not just put it into the pan and
shape it into the pan
they could be meaning something
completely different with a greased
baker that i'm not aware of
so i'm just going to put it into this
loaf pan
and
it gives you a couple of options it
tells you to put in a half a cup of
boiling water
and then you can either
cover it and stick it in the oven or
not cover it and baste it
with more
hot boiling water halfway through
i think they're afraid of it drying out
so
this fills this pan i don't know how i'm
going to get a half a cup of
boiling water in here
uh
let's see
let's see i'm gonna put it on top of
another baking pan
because i don't want it to bubble over
in the oven that would be bad
dirty hand clean hand dirty hand clean
hand
um
some water here
i had about three quarters of a
cup i'm gonna put that much on and see
what happens i'm gonna cover it with tin
foil i will open the tin foil probably
halfway through
and see if it needs a little bit more
water
it says to bake in a quick oven
40 to 50 minutes so let's see what
happens
whoa looks kind of anemic
let me put that back in the oven see if
i can brown the top a little bit
all right hey friends hey glenn that
looks better than it did before yeah you
did it earlier
a little bit has browned up a little bit
there is a lot
meatloaf well there's a lot of sauce in
the bottom there i think i need a fork
maybe
a couple of forks to get that out i've
got some nuts and forks i want you to
rinse okay so bring the plate over
there's a lot of liquid in the bottom of
the
there we go
okay okay holds together nicely
but i mean
it's a little anemic
fork well i predict it's going to be
moist it's not dried out it is going to
be moist and not not dry and it it holds
together really well
let's see
tastes like meatloaf tastes like
meatloaf
you know you throw down some vegetables
you're good to go
it tastes like meatloaf
if you were expecting
some sort of mexican flavor
you'd be sadly disappointed because it
just i mean it's there but it's so
subtle you'd have to
you have to really increase that flavor
and i guess in 1923
for a company that's trying to introduce
these flavors outside of the american
southwest outside of
you know mexico
to the people of the northeast
that's that would probably blow your
head off maybe in 1923. oh pretty good
though it is really good it's a very
good meal okay i could stand here and
eat it all night because i could just
eat meatloaf
all night long doesn't matter what the
flavors are
it's not hugely mexican
it's not hugely
it's there's no heat even though i
probably put 12 drops of tabasco instead
of six
it's still really good though it's very
pleasant it is
still really good it doesn't make kind
of downplays it's a good meatloaf
and this is an amazing little piece of
american history this company and
what they did and who they became and
then how they disappeared um
i really wish i could get that
box meal you know nothing's new you
think you're buying a box meal today
having it delivered to your house and
it's something all brand new no 1920s
it's all been done
thanks for stopping by see you again
soon
you