I was looking for a fresh ground-meat recipe recently. Thumbing through a 45-year-old edition of Craig Claiborne’s “New York Times Cookbook,” I was reminded how much recipes have changed since I was a kid. I was in middle school when that book came out. In those days, my mom used a lot of ground chuck, but we only had it fried in patties, or, rarely, in meatloaf.

I spotted this Hamburger Potato Roll, which Claiborne described as “one of the most frequently requested recipes ever printed in The Times.” Imagine a meatloaf mixture, patted out flat and topped with mashed potatoes and then rolled up to bake. I thought: This recipe sounds good, but I bet I can make it more flavorful. The original recipe is seasoned timidly. A pound of ground beef and 2 cups of mashed potatoes with only a medium onion, one lousy clove of garlic and a mere 1/4 teaspoon of some herb. We can do better.

The other thing I noticed was the drippings in which the onion is sauteed. My mom always kept her drippings, usually from bacon, in a small white bowl and used them for all sorts of frying – potatoes, burgers, hot dogs, even fish sticks. I usually have some, too, in a small jar, but I must confess, thanks to the specter of heart disease, I throw away more than I keep. So another change I made to the recipe is to use vegetable oil instead.

So I decided I would have fun with this and the result follows. Add another vegetable and a salad and call it a meal. Make ahead, pull it out and bake it. I think it would be good enough even for an informal company supper.

Hamburger Potato Roll

Serves 4-5.

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium onion chopped

2-3 cloves garlic mashed

1 pound ground chuck

1 egg lightly beaten

2 slices of bread, soaked in water

1- 2 teaspoons oregano

1 teaspoon basil

1-2 tablespoons soy sauce or 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce or a squirt of ketchup

Salt and pepper to taste

2-3 tablespoons dry bread crumbs

2 cups warm mashed potatoes (garlic or other seasoning optional)

Bacon strips (optional)

Saute the onions and garlic in the olive oil until barely soft. Put the meat into a bowl, and add the softened onions and the egg. Squeeze the excess water from the bread, and tear it up into the bowl, then add all the seasonings. Mix thoroughly until the mixture is so well-blended that the bread is not visible.

Lay out a piece of wax paper and pat the beef out into a rectangle about half an inch thick. Sprinkle it all over with the dried bread crumbs, then gently spread the mashed potatoes over that. Using the waxed paper to handle it, roll up the meat and potatoes, tucking the ends in a little, and lay in a shallow baking pan. If you wish, top with bacon.

Bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees. Baste it with drippings in the pan. Make a gravy in the pan after baking to serve on the side.