Not long ago I was warming up one of those fancy health-conscious TV dinners when I got a little curious about the entreé, Salisbury Steak. I decided to Google the term and was shocked to find that my meal would never have passed muster with James H. Salisbury at all, at all.
Salisbury turns out to have been an early (though somewhat misguided) forerunner of modern low-carb enthusiasts. He rightly believed that people ate way too many "starchy" foods, but he also wrongly believed that vegetables of almost any kind were bad for you. He invented the Salisbury Steak as a health food which, eaten along with copious amounts of hot water three times a day, was supposed to keep the digestive tract free of toxins and other bad stuff. There were all kinds of crazy things like that going on at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries.
The original Salisbury Steak would have been made of pure, lean beef (and very little else) grilled. The Salisbury Steak and the Hamburger Steak were virtually indistinguishable at one point, but the Salisbury gradually became adulterated with the addition of gravy, mushrooms, egg, onion, bread crumbs, etc…
Salisbury would certainly never have approved of his invention being served with a side of mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables.
The next time you fix yourself a plain hamburger patty, maybe with some Worcestershire sauce (as Salisbury recommended) think of the inventor and be thankful that you can wash it down with something tasty, rather than several glasses of hot water.
Look up how hamburger is supposed to be made- now that is awsome!
Tim, Does your Mother know you’re eating that wretched stuff?
Hippo-
This is not something I eat regularly, but we keep a few on hand for when someone is in a hurry or for when I am too absorbed with a painting to stop and fix something better. They’re not that bad.
Plus, once in a while I just get a hankerin’ for something freeze-dried, reconstituted and chock full of preservatives. I am an American, after all.
Like when you go camping and suddenly Dinty Moore Beef Stew (canned) tastes fabulous? I crave spaghetti-o’s when I’m pregnant which is incomprehensible to me at any other time.
Haha. Sometimes you DO just want something different, too, even if it’s not something you’d want to eat every day. I remember after my first eight months in Germany (five years ago), we all gathered down South to greet relatives visiting from America (who had also lived in Germany; and two were born here). I tell you I got so sick and tired of eating the same old things and just HAD to have McDonald’s. My relatives were big on hard rolls with jam (“Broetchen”), rolls with yucky salty smoked lunch meat, hot mustard that’ll make a grown man cry, and cream cheese.
I just can’t feel “satisfied” on eating the same things all of the time, especially if I don’t really like it.
I’d always disliked McDonald’s before then, so I can’t explain why that’s what I had to have. My father-in-law remarked, “You’re in Germany and you want McDonald’s?” I *so* saw that coming, by the way. I told him, I’ve been in Germany for eight months, not just a few days, and yes, I want something different, just once, and I’ll feel MUCH better.
Once in a while, I still have to have a Fisch Mäc (Filet O’ Fish) and nothing else will do, and I’m not sorry 🙂