Meatballs in gravy are a nice comfort food, so when I saw a recipe for Baconized Meatballs in a hundred-year-old cookbook, I decided to give it a try. Bacon is chopped into small pieces, sauted, and then mixed with ground beef, spices, and other ingredients, and used to make the meatballs.
Here’s the original recipe:
I was surprised that “meat balls” was written as two words in the old recipe. I updated to the more modern way of spelling and combined into one word: meatballs.
Here’s the recipe updated for modern cooks:
Baconized Meatballs
Meatballs
4 slices bacon
1 cup cracker crumbs
1/2 cup hot water
1 pound ground beef
1 egg
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon onion salt
1/4 teaspoon celery salt
1/4 teaspoon thyme
1/4 teaspoon sage
1/4 allspice
2 tablespoons flour
1/4 cup cooking oil, shortening, or lard
Gravy
3 tablespoons flour
2 1/2 cups water
Cut bacon into small pieces, then put in a skillet and sauté until crisp. Set aside.
In a mixing bowl put the cracker crumbs, water, ground beef, egg, salt, pepper onion salt, celery salt, thyme, sage, allspice, and sautéed bacon pieces. Mix well, and form into meat balls (about 1 inch in diameter).
Put 2 tablespoons of flour on a plate. Roll meatballs in the flour.
Place the cooking oil, shortening, or lard into an overproof skillet and heat until hot. Drop balls into the hot fat, then gently roll the balls with a fork until all sides are a light brown. Move skillet to oven (preheated to 375° F.), and continue cooking until the meatballs are thoroughly cooked (about 20 minutes). Remove from oven and put meatballs in serving dish.
Put skillet back on the top of the stove, and reheat using medium heat. To make the gravy, stir the 3 tablespoons flour into the meat juices. Slowly add the water while stirring. Continue stirring until the gravy thickens and is hot and bubbly. Removed from heat, and pour gravy over the meatballs, then serve.
A Hundred Years Ago 
The meatballs sound pretty good. I was picturing the balls wrapped in bacon. Chopping up the bacon is a lot easier.
It worked well to chop the bacon. When I first saw the recipe title, I also thought that the meatballs would be wrapped in bacon – but apparently that’s a more modern rendition.
It’s the evolution of words, isn’t it? It starts out as meat ball, then becomes meat-ball, and finally the morph is complete with meatball!
You described it perfectly. I’ve noticed a similar evolution for other words when looking at hundred-year-old cookbooks. For example, “sauce pan” was two words back then; now it’s one.
I am salivating…
They’re tasty.
cool that they did this so early. When I worked at Wegman’s meat department, we did much the same with mixing in bacon to the bacon cheeseburger patties.
It’s fascinating that a similar process is still used when making bacon cheeseburger patties.
You had me at “baconized”!
It apparently worked for me since this recipe jumped out at me when I was browsing through a hundred-year-old cookbook.
Haha! My sons would love this!!
It’s a yummy recipe.
Yes, we have bacon … may try this when I have some beef!!!
I always hate it when I don’t have all the ingredients I need to make a recipe.
I love the coined word “baconized.” I may try it one of these mornings. “Would you like your eggs baconized?”
Yes, I think that I’ll have my eggs baconized. 🙂
I tried this recipe and it was great! I used bread crumbs instead of cracker crumbs (same difference) and I fried the meatballs right in the bacon fat that came when I cooked the bacon. For leftovers I cut up the meatballs into cubes and mixed them with the remaining noodles and added some water in the pan to reheat. Was wonderful.
It’s wonderful to hear that you enjoyed this recipe. I like how you used the leftovers to make a deslightful new dish with noodles.