Veal Loaf
Chop two pounds of lean veal and one fourth pound salt pork; add one cup cracker crumbs, three beaten eggs, one teaspoon salt, few grains cayenne, one teaspoon onion juice, and one tablespoon lemon juice.
Moisten with well-flavored beef or veal stock. Press in buttered bread pan, cover. Baste occasionally during baking. Bake one hour.
A plain forcemeat loaf from the era when "loaf" meant a chopped-meat mixture bound with cracker crumbs and eggs and baked in a bread pan. The original gives no oven temperature and no yield, so both need supplying.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none; 350F is a reasonable modern setting. At an hour, a loaf of this size in a standard 8x4 or 9x5 pan should be close to done, but go by temperature rather than clock.
- The number that mattersGround veal, like any ground meat, needs an internal reading of 160F at the centre.
- Chop, not grind"Chop two pounds of lean veal" means hand-chopped or coarsely put through a plate — the texture is meant to be discernible, not pasty. If buying ground veal, ask for a coarse grind or pulse cubed shoulder briefly in a processor.
- Salt porkThe quarter pound of salt pork is the fat that keeps lean veal from drying out; do not leave it out. Rinse it, chop it very fine, and reduce the added salt if your pork is heavily cured. Unsmoked fatty bacon or fresh pork belly plus a pinch more salt will stand in.
- Onion juiceMade by halving an onion and pressing or grating it, then straining — it flavours without visible pieces. A teaspoon of onion juice is roughly what you get from grating a quarter of a medium onion; finely grated onion pulp works if you accept the texture.
- Cracker crumbsCrushed plain soda crackers or water biscuits, not sweetened graham. About 1 cup of crumbs comes from roughly 20 to 28 saltines, depending how finely they are crushed. Dry breadcrumbs can stand in.
- "Moisten with stock"The quantity is left to judgement. Add stock a few tablespoons at a time until the mixture holds together when pressed but is not slack — usually 1/3 to 1/2 cup for this amount of meat.
- Cover and basteCovering traps steam so the lean veal does not toughen; basting is with the pan juices, or with a little extra stock and melted butter if the loaf runs dry. Uncover for the last ten minutes if you want colour on top.
- Yield and servingServes six to eight. Veal loaf was often eaten cold as well as hot — chilled overnight in the pan it slices cleanly for a cold luncheon plate.
Veal loaf did the work an entrée was supposed to do in an American household of the early 1900s: a made dish of chopped meat, cheap to build, easy to slice, and equally presentable hot with a sauce or cold on a platter. Cracker crumbs as the binder mark it as distinctly American — English forcemeats leaned on breadcrumbs and suet — and the crackers reflect how ubiquitous the soda cracker barrel was in the period pantry. The lemon juice and cayenne sharpen a meat often considered bland; onion juice, pressed rather than chopped, is generally said to have been a favourite trick of the cooking-school writers of the 1890s and 1900s, who wanted onion flavour without what they regarded as coarse visible pieces. Lowney's book was published by a Boston chocolate company, and this recipe's terse, assume-nothing-explained style is typical of it.