Meatloaf

A plate of meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy has been called, "the All-American meal." Trying to find a casual restaurant or diner that doesn't have a meatloaf on the menu, is like trying to find an Italian restaurant that doesn’t serve pasta. Like many classic American foods, the true story of how it came to be will never be known for certain. One theory is that it's just a larger, loaf-shaped meatball. The Italian immigrants that populated the Northeastern states would take their traditional meatball recipes, and to save the time of rolling each individual meatball, they simply formed it into the shape of a loaf of Italian bread, topped it with tomato sauce, and baked it. Others believe the modern meatloaf was really born during the Depression of the 1930's. To stretch the small amounts of meat people had, it was ground and mixed with stale breadcrumbs. Sometimes these ​loafs actually contained more "loaf" than meat. Many attribute meatloaf becoming such a classic American "comfort food" to the fact that these Depression-era cooks were able to make something so tasty and filling, during such hard times.