Veal Loaf
Mince cold veal very fine; measure and add to it one-quarter as much chopped fat ham, 1 cupful of fine stale bread crumbs, 2 well-beaten eggs and a high seasoning of salt and pepper. Mold into a loaf, lay on a greased flat pan, brush with beaten egg and sprinkle with fine crumbs. Bake in a hot oven for half an hour and serve with a brown gravy.
This is a leftovers dish: the veal is already cooked, so the baking is really about setting the egg binder and browning the crust. Read the proportions as volume measures, not weights.
- "Hot oven"In the ranges usually given for the term, roughly 400-450F; the recipe itself gives no temperature. Half an hour at that heat is enough to firm the egg and colour the crumb coating on an already-cooked mixture.
- Cold vealAny cooked veal will do — the remains of a roast, braised shoulder, or simmered breast. The recipe gives no quantity for the meat; working back from 1 cup of crumbs and 2 eggs, something in the region of 3 cups of minced meat is a reasonable reading. Mince by hand or pulse briefly; a food processor run too long turns it to paste.
- Measure, then addThe fat ham is one-quarter the volume of the veal, so on the 3-cup reading that is 3/4 cup of chopped ham. The proportion matters to how moist the finished loaf is.
- Fat hamRead this as the fatty part of the ham rather than lean sliced ham. Salt pork, pancetta, or the fat edge cut from a bone-in ham all work; without a fatty cut the loaf will be crumbly, since cooked veal is lean.
- Season firmly"A high seasoning" is not rhetorical. Cooked meat that has been minced and diluted with crumbs and egg tastes flat unless salted well above what seems right in the raw mixture — allow about a teaspoon of salt per pound of meat, less if the ham is very salty, plus a generous quantity of pepper.
- MoistureStale crumbs and cooked meat will both drink liquid. If the mixture does not hold together when squeezed, work in a few spoonfuls of stock, gravy or milk before shaping.
- Reheating temperatureBecause the veal is already cooked and then handled cold, bring the centre of the loaf to 165F. The prescribed half hour in a hot oven will usually do it for a loaf of about 2 inches high; check with a thermometer rather than by time alone.
- Gravy and yieldA loaf of this size would serve about four or five, though the recipe gives no yield. The brown gravy is called for in the text and the loaf is lean enough to want it; a simple flour-and-stock gravy, or thinned pan drippings from the original roast, would suit.
- Cold the next dayLoaves of this type were also eaten cold in slices, though this recipe directs it be served hot with gravy. Chill it thoroughly before slicing thin for sandwiches.
Veal loaf belongs to the large family of "made dishes" that carried the remains of a joint into a second meal: nothing here need be bought specially. The technique — mince cold meat, bind with crumbs and egg, season hard, bake in a shape — is the same one behind salmon loaf, ham loaf and the pressed veal moulds of Victorian cold tables, and it predates the ground-beef meatloaf that later became the more familiar American dish. Veal was a plausible economy meat in a period when calves were a by-product of dairying and cheap cuts like breast and shoulder were widely available; the fat ham is there to supply richness that lean veal does not have on its own.