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breadcrumbs and milk in a bowl, left until pasty

breadcrumbs + milk, left ten minutes to become a paste. This panade is the whole difference between meatloaf and a large dry hamburger: the starch granules swell with milk and physically obstruct the meat proteins from linking into a tight network as they contract, and the trapped liquid stays in the loaf instead of running out. Dry breadcrumbs stirred in do the opposite — they absorb moisture from the meat