Vegetable-Hamburger Cups From A 1969 Cookbook

Hello, my name is Laura, and I am addicted to vintage cookbooks.

There’s something about the colors, patterns and photos in those great cookbooks from decades gone by that makes me smile. I grab them up whenever I find them at thrift stores and book sales. 

But now the truth … I do actually use them! It’s fun to flip through a cookbook from years past and choose a few to try. It’s fun to experiment with them and see if they’re still workable and yummy.

This one definitely was. It’s a ground beef cup shaped over the bottom of a muffin tin and cooked, then inverted and filled with mashed potatoes and a lovely, cheesy sauce. The one thing I would change is making sure the meat is fairly dry before forming it because it was fairly juicy and didn’t hold up all the way around each cup. Other than that one change, it was such a good experiment!

Ingredients:

1 egg

1/4 cup milk

1/4 cup crushed crackers

3/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 lb ground beef

4 servings mashed potatoes

2 Tbsp sliced green onions

1/2 can condensed cheddar cheese soup (about 2/3 cup)

3 Tbsp milk

1 cup frozen peas, cooked and drained

1. Combine first 5 ingredients in a large bowl. Add the ground beef and mix well. 

2. Flip a regular muffin tin over onto a baking sheet and lightly spray with nonstick spray. Divide the ground beef mixture into four parts and shape each over one of the muffin bottoms. Refrigerate for an hour.

3. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bake cups for 20 minutes.

4. Prepare mashed potatoes as directed. Stir in onion.

5. In a medium sauce pan, mix soup with 3 Tbsp milk, then stir in peas and heat through.

6. Gently remove ground beef cups from the inverted muffin tin and place on a plate or in a bowl. Fill with potatoes and spoon cheese sauce over the top.