Veal Loaf
3 1/2 pounds of veal 1 cup of bread crumbs 1 teaspoonful of salt 1 teaspoonful of onion juice ½ pound of ham 2 eggs ½ teaspoonful of pepper 1/2 teaspoonful of sage 1/2 teaspoonful of cloves 1/2 teaspoonful of allspice Chop the uncooked veal and ham very fine; add to them all the other ingredients, the eggs well beaten; mix thoroughly, and press into a square pan to mould. Turn it out on a baking pan, brush it over with beaten egg, and bake in a slow oven for two hours, basting three or four times while baking with a tablespoonful of butter melted in a half cup of boiling water. Serve cold, cut in thin slices.
A cold-sliced veal loaf built like a coarse terrine: raw veal and ham chopped fine, bound with egg and crumbs, baked slowly and basted so the lean meat does not dry out. The basting is the point, not a flourish.
- Veal quantityThe ingredient list gives no weight for the veal itself, though the method calls for it. Comparable loaves of this era use 2½ to 3 lb of raw veal to the ½ lb of ham, 1 cup of crumbs and 2 eggs; scale by feel from that ratio.
- Slow ovenA 'slow oven' of this period is usually read as somewhere around 275-325F; 300F is a reasonable setting. Two hours at that heat suits a dense loaf of raw meat; anything hotter drives out the juices and the loaf turns crumbly and grey.
- Cook to temperature, not clockGround or finely chopped veal should reach 160F at the centre. A loaf of roughly 3 lb will get there in about two hours at 300F, but check with a thermometer rather than trusting the time.
- Pepper measurementThe 1½ teaspoonfuls of pepper against 1 teaspoonful of salt and ½ teaspoonful each of sage, cloves and allspice is out of step with the rest of the seasoning and may be a misprint. Season lightly to start and adjust.
- Salt and the hamHalf a pound of ham carries a great deal of salt on its own, and cured hams vary widely in how salty they are. Start with half the teaspoonful of salt.
- Onion juiceGrate a peeled onion on the fine side of a box grater and press the pulp through a sieve; a small onion yields about a teaspoonful. Grated pulp works as well if you do not mind the texture.
- Chopping the meatHand-chopping gives the loose, open crumb that slices cleanly when cold. A food processor pulsed a few times will do; run it continuously and you get a smooth, springy pate instead.
- Basting liquidA tablespoon of butter melted into half a cup of boiling water is a thin baste that steams the surface rather than frying it. Keep it hot on the stove so each application does not chill the loaf.
- Chilling and yieldCool the loaf completely, then refrigerate overnight under a light weight so it firms enough to slice thin. From about 3 lb of meat expect 8 to 10 servings; it keeps three or four days.
Hot Weather Dishes belongs to the small class of late-nineteenth-century cookbooks organised around the problem of summer: kitchens heated by coal ranges, cold storage that was limited and uneven even where the domestic ice trade reached, and a household that still expected meat on the table. A veal loaf answered all of it. One long slow baking, done early in the day or the evening before, produced a stock of cold slices for luncheon, supper and picnic baskets, so the range need not be lit again so soon. Veal was a natural choice because it is lean and pale and sets firm when cold; the ham supplies the salt, fat and colour it lacks, and the cloves and allspice are a familiar warm-spice signature of American potted and moulded meats of the period, of a kind also found in English forcemeat and brawn. Loaves like this are often seen as forerunners of the twentieth-century meatloaf, though the intention here was the reverse of a hot family dinner: this one was meant to be served cold.