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Veal Cake
Take a pound and a half of cold cooked veal freed from fat and skin. Mince it finely, and thoroughly mix with it half a pound of good bacon, also finely minced. Season the whole with a tea-spoonful of grated lemon-rind, a pinch of freshly-pounded mace, half a small nutmeg, grated, and a little salt and cayenne. Press it smoothly into a buttered dish, and bake in a gentle oven. When it is done enough, drain the fat from it, turn it upon a dish, and serve hot or cold. If hot, a little brown gravy should be sent to table with it. Beef suet finely shredded may, if preferred, be substituted for the bacon. If any portion of this cake is left after being cut, it may be divided into slices, and heated in a Dutch oven. This cake should be baked in a gentle oven, or it will be dried up. Time to bake the cake, an hour and a half. Probable cost, veal, 10d. to 11d. per pound.
A potted-meat loaf built from Sunday's leftover roast, held together by nothing but fat and pressure. The two things that decide whether it succeeds are the oven temperature and how hard you press it into the dish.
- "A gentle oven"Roughly 300-325F. The book repeats the warning for a reason: there is no egg, stock or crumb in this mixture, so a hot oven simply renders out the bacon fat and leaves you with dry mince. An hour and a half at that low heat is right for a 2 lb loaf.
- Press it hardThe cake holds together by compaction and set fat alone. Pack the mixture into a small, deep buttered dish in layers, pressing each one down firmly with the back of a spoon, so there are no air pockets to crumble along later.
- Turn it out warm, slice it coldDrain the rendered fat while hot and invert it. The recipe allows serving it hot, but for clean slices let it cool completely under a light weight (a plate with a tin on top); cold, it cuts like a terrine, while hot it is likely to crumble when sliced.
- Bacon and its saltVictorian bacon was generally cured more heavily than most bacon sold today, which may be why the recipe adds only "a little salt." Taste-check by frying a teaspoon of the raw mixture before you fill the dish.
- The suet variantShredded beef suet in place of bacon gives a paler, blander cake and no cure flavour, but it also gives no salt at all. If you take that route, season more assertively and expect a drier result.
- Half a small nutmegThat is a lot by modern taste, close to a whole teaspoon grated. Half a teaspoon of nutmeg with a good pinch of mace suits most palates; both spices were used freely with veal throughout the period.
- Cooking throughThe bacon goes in raw. Bake until the centre reaches 160F on an instant-read thermometer, which the hour and a half should comfortably achieve in a loaf of this size.
- "Heated in a Dutch oven"Not the lidded cast-iron pot. In Victorian usage a Dutch oven is normally the open tin reflector stood before an open fire. Reheat slices in a dry frying pan or under a grill instead.
- YieldTwo pounds of raw mixture, a little less once the fat is drained; enough for roughly six as a main course with gravy and potatoes, or eight to ten sliced cold for a cold table.
A dish of household economy: a pound and a half of cold roast veal, a scrap of bacon and the spice box, turned into a second dinner. The name is misleading to modern ears -- "cake" in this period covers anything pressed and baked in a mould, sweet or savoury, and veal cake sits in the same family as potted meats and brawn. Veal was a by-product of the dairy herd, and the recipe gives its price as 10d. to 11d. a pound. The lemon rind, mace and nutmeg are a common Georgian and Victorian seasoning for veal, whose mildness was generally thought to need help; the same trio turns up in veal forcemeat, veal pies and potted veal.