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To Pot Uncooked Veal
625. Stew the veal in the oven with a very little water till tender, then chop it, and to two pounds of meat put half a pound of butter, the rind of half a lemon grated, a little mace, two ounces fat bacon, and pepper and salt to your taste. Pound it very fine in a mortar, and iust warm it through in the oven before putting it into the pots; a little butter melted, or clarified suet, must then be poured over it. It looks and tastes well if alternate layers of potted lean of ham are laid in the pots with the veal.
A Victorian potted meat: veal cooked gently, pounded to a paste with butter and bacon, and sealed under fat. The title distinguishes it from the more common method of potting up yesterday's roast — here you start with raw meat.
- The hinge: cook it dry, then pound it wetThe veal is stewed with "a very little water" so it steams rather than boils — you want tender meat and concentrated juices, not veal broth. Whatever little liquid is left in the pan can go into the mortar with the meat, though the recipe does not direct it.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no temperature. A covered dish at around 300F for 1½ to 2 hours should bring 2 lb of shoulder or shin to shreddable tenderness. The final "just warm it through" needs only a low oven for about 15 minutes, enough to loosen the paste so it packs without air pockets.
- ProportionsTwo pounds of cooked veal to half a pound (2 sticks, 225 g) of butter and 2 oz bacon. That ratio is what makes it spreadable cold; cutting the butter substantially gives a dry, crumbly pot.
- Mace"A little mace" means blade mace, the lacy covering of the nutmeg, pounded with the meat. Ground mace works at about ¼ teaspoon for this quantity; nutmeg is a near substitute but coarser in effect.
- Mortar or machine"Pound it very fine" is the whole texture of the dish. A food processor does it in under a minute, but pulse rather than run it — over-processing warm meat with butter emulsifies into something pasty and dull.
- The fat sealThe recipe allows "a little butter melted, or clarified suet". Clarified butter keeps better than melted whole butter, whose milk solids sink through and spoil first. Pour a layer 3-4 mm deep over cold, firmly packed meat so it sets as an unbroken skin.
- Storage, which has changed completelyA butter or suet seal over cooked meat cuts off most air contact, and in a nineteenth-century larder these pots were expected to keep for weeks. Treat this as a fresh pâté instead: refrigerate below 40F and eat within four or five days, or freeze it.
- Yield and servingTwo pounds of veal plus the butter makes roughly 2½ lb of potted meat, enough for a dozen or more servings. Serve at cool room temperature with toast; the ham-and-veal layering gives striped slices if you pack it into a loaf tin and turn it out.
Potting belonged to the era before refrigeration: meat pounded with butter, packed tight, and sealed under fat that excluded air, giving a cook cold larder food that would hold. It survived into the twentieth century as a breakfast and teatime spread. Veal was a natural candidate because its mild flavour and pale colour took kindly to mace and lemon rind, a common English seasoning pair for white meats, and because it carried little fat of its own — hence the half-pound of butter and the bacon. The suggestion of alternate layers of potted ham suits the Victorian taste for food that looked composed on the plate, the same instinct behind the pressed and moulded meats of the period's cold tables. Many nineteenth-century books printed such receipts, usually for the leftovers of a joint, which may be why this one announces in its title that it begins with raw meat.