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English Ham Loaf
Chop equal quantities of cold cooked veal and ham. Grease a baking dish and place in layers of veal, ham, cold boiled macaroni and sliced hard cooked eggs. Season each layer with salt, pepper, chopped parsley and a pinch of nutmeg. Add 1 cup of milk and bake until well browned over the top. This makes a delicious dish for dinner served hot, and may be sliced cold and served on crisp lettuce with mayonnaise dressing.
A leftovers dish from the era when cooked veal and ham were routinely on hand. The recipe gives no oven temperature, no pan size and no quantities beyond the milk, so a few decisions have to be made before it goes in.
- Oven and timeWith everything already cooked, the bake only needs to set the milk and brown the top: 350F for 35-45 minutes in a shallow dish. Cover for the first 20 minutes if the eggs and macaroni on top are colouring too fast.
- Quantities to aim forAbout 2 cups each chopped veal and ham, 2 cups cooked macaroni and 4 hard-cooked eggs fills a 2-quart dish and serves four to six. The single cup of milk is scant for that volume; it binds rather than submerges, and a beaten egg whisked into it makes the loaf hold together for slicing cold.
- VealCold cooked veal is now an occasional item at best. Cooked chicken or turkey thigh substitutes without changing the character of the dish; leftover pork shoulder also works.
- HamModern supermarket ham is wetter and saltier than the home-boiled ham this assumes. Taste before seasoning and go light on the added salt in the layers.
- Cold boiled macaroniBoil it a minute short of done and rinse, or it will turn soft in the oven. Macaroni was often sold in long tubes in this period, though elbows layer more evenly.
- Slicing it coldFor the cold service, bake it in a loaf pan, press it under a weighted plate while it cools, and chill it thoroughly overnight. A wide, shallow dish will be harder to cut into neat slices.
- BrowningThere is no crumb or cheese topping specified, so the browning comes from the exposed meat and egg. A scatter of buttered breadcrumbs over the top gives a more reliable crust.
Despite the name, this is a layered casserole rather than a bound loaf, and "English" here signals the veal-and-ham pairing familiar from British raised pies and veal-and-ham pie, where the two meats and sliced hard-cooked egg appear in the same arrangement. It belongs to the broader one-dish-meal habit: cookbooks of the period favoured a single baking dish carrying protein, starch and seasoning together, both to economise on fuel and to use up a cold roast joint. The instruction to slice it cold onto lettuce with mayonnaise is the same economy running one step further, turning a hot dinner into the next day's salad plate.