Veal Loaf
2 pounds chopped veal. 1/2 1/2 pound chopped pork. 3 tablespoonfuls powdered cracker. 1 tablespoonful sage. 2 tablespoonfuls butter. 1 teaspoonful black pepper. 1 teaspoonful mace. Salt to taste. 1 egg well beaten and mixed in the ingredients.
Make up into a loaf or pone, and bake slowly three and a half hours. This is an excellent dish to use with lettuce, etc. in the spring or early autumn, when game is out of season. It is best to be made the day before using.--Mrs.
A cold-sliced meat loaf in all but name, meant to be baked one day and eaten the next. The one thing to change is the baking time: three and a half hours will leave a two-and-a-half-pound loaf dry and grey.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature; "bake slowly" would correspond to something in the region of 300F on a modern dial. At that heat a loaf this size will almost certainly be done well before three and a half hours, so start checking early. Cook to an internal temperature of 160F and stop there rather than following the clock.
- Chopped veal and porkBoth mean finely chopped or minced meat, whether done by hand or in one of the hand-cranked mincers available by this date. Ground veal is a special-order item in many places; ask a butcher, or use ground pork shoulder for the whole quantity. The half pound of pork is there for fat, so do not substitute anything lean for it.
- Powdered crackerCracker crumbs, crushed fine. Unsalted soda crackers or saltines are the closest thing; three tablespoons is a light binding only, so expect a loose mixture.
- The sageA tablespoonful of dried rubbed sage is assertive but in keeping with period seasoning. If using modern ground sage, which is finer and stronger, start with two teaspoons.
- MaceMace is the outer covering of the nutmeg seed, warmer and less sharp than nutmeg itself. A teaspoonful reads as a lot; ground mace loses potency fast, so a fresh jar will go further than an old one.
- Loaf or poneFree-form on a shallow pan, as "pone" implies, or packed into a loaf tin. Free-form browns better; a tin keeps it moist and makes neater slices.
- Salt"Salt to taste" with raw ground meat means seasoning by judgement: about a teaspoon and a half of fine salt for two and a half pounds of meat. Fry a small spoonful of the mixture to check before shaping.
- Resting and yieldThe recipe recommends making it the day before, and it is worth following. Chilled overnight the loaf firms enough to slice thin without crumbling. Serves six to eight as a cold plate with lettuce.
Veal loaf belongs to the nineteenth-century American tradition of cold pressed meats, served sliced at supper or on a summer sideboard long before "meat loaf" became a hot main dish. The note about game being out of season is the point of the recipe: when game was unavailable, a well-spiced loaf of butcher's meat filled the gap. The word "pone," borrowed from an Algonquian term for baked bread and most familiar in corn pone, is used here simply to mean a shaped, free-standing loaf rather than something baked in a mould. Like most entries in Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, it arrives credited to a contributor, part of a collection assembled from the receipt books of two hundred and fifty ladies of Virginia and her sister states.