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Veal Loaf (Eggs teaspoon pepper teaspoon)
3 eggs 1/4 teaspoon pepper 1/2 teaspoon salt Roll the crackers fine; mix them with the chopped meat and the other ingredients; shape into a loaf and bake three hours, basting occasionally in the fat rendered from a small portion of the pork and pricking the loaf so that the fat may penetrate. Serve cold sliced very thin.
The page as printed has lost the top of its ingredient list — only the eggs, pepper and salt survive, while the veal, salt pork and crackers appear only in the method. Treat the quantities below as reconstruction, and read the whole thing before starting.
- The missing ingredientsLoaves of this type in books of the period run to about 3 lb chopped veal, 1/4 lb salt pork or fat bacon, and one cup of fine cracker crumbs, bound with the three eggs. The original numbers are simply not on this page, so any figure is inference rather than transcription.
- Crackers, not crumbs from a box"Roll the crackers fine" means plain dry crackers of the soda or common sort, crushed under a rolling pin. Panko is too coarse and too dry; unseasoned dry breadcrumbs are the closest substitute, cup for cup.
- Chopped, not ground to paste"Chopped meat" here is hand-chopped or coarsely ground veal. A food processor run too long turns it into a smooth emulsion, and the loaf slices like luncheon meat instead of showing texture.
- The oven temperatureNo temperature is given on the page. A moderate oven, 350F, is right for the first hour; drop to 300F afterwards so the outside does not harden while the centre finishes.
- Three hours is too longNinety minutes to two hours will bring a 3 lb loaf to 160F at the centre, which is the safe and correct endpoint for ground veal. The original three hours reflects an unreliable oven and a taste for a firm, dry loaf that slices thin without crumbling; going the full distance at modern temperatures gives you something closer to pâté made of sawdust.
- Basting and prickingThe salt pork renders fat into the pan and the pricking lets it soak back in — veal is very lean and has nothing of its own. A skewer through the top every twenty minutes, then a spoonful of pan fat over it, is the whole technique. Laying two or three strips of bacon across the loaf does much the same job with less attention.
- Serving cold is the pointThis is a cold-sideboard dish. Cool it in its pan, weight it lightly with a plate and a tin, and chill overnight; the loaf firms up and only then will it cut into the very thin slices the recipe asks for. Warm, it falls apart.
- YieldA loaf on this scale serves eight to ten as a cold cut, and keeps three or four days covered in the refrigerator.
Veal loaf appears in many American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it belongs to the cold-larder tradition rather than the dinner table: a large piece of cheap, mild meat cooked once, pressed, and drawn on for days of sandwiches, luncheon plates and supper trays. Veal was the natural choice because dairy farming produced bull calves in quantity and the meat was inexpensive, pale and neutral enough to take the flavour of the salt pork worked through it. The crackers and eggs are doing structural work — binder and extender both, stretching the meat and giving the loaf enough body to slice thin without crumbling, the same logic that later produced meatloaf proper. How this one came down to us with its ingredient list decapitated is unclear; page damage or scanning loss would account for it.