SC - OOP - Resturant Talk

[Huette von Ahrens]

RichSCA at aol.com wrote:
> 
> A Taylor's Maid-Rite is a loose meat sandwich made of
> finely ground hamburger. The hamburger is cooked and put in a bun, then
> served with mustard, pickles or chopped onions. Maid-Rite restaurants are
> franchises located mainly in Iowa and the midwest. But now, thanks to
> Taylor's Maid-Rite in Marshalltown, you can enjoy the great taste of a
> midwest tradition without leaving your home.

I wonder what the industrial rationale is for not forming a patty, yet
still calling this a hamburger variant. A hamburger is a Hamburger
Steak, originally made (in Hamburg, Germany) by pounding beef cutlets
with a slice of fat, folding and pounding again, like Damascus steel,
until fairly homogeneous. I have seen recipes dating from the turn of
the century that don't mention ground meat, but it would be kind of
labor-intensive to do this in quantity for a restaurant, as would
scraping the beef to a pulp, the OTHER way it used to be done. I suspect
grinding the beef might have come into its own for restaurants that sold
Hamburger Steak sandwiches in quantity (often on sliced bread, BTW, not
on buns).

Could it be that the Loose Meat Hamburger is derived from the need to
make them quickly without taking the time to form a patty, or could it
simply be derived from some completely different tradition from the
Hamburger Steak?  

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com