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Veal Patties
Mince about four pounds of leg of veal and one-fourth pound of salt pork. Roll half a dozen soda crackers and sift them. Mix with the minced meat one tablespoonful each of salt and pepper, one grated nutmeg and two well-beaten eggs. Mould the mixture into small oval shapes, place them in a baking-dish, sprinkle the cracker-crumbs over the top, place a few small pieces of butter here and there and pour in one-half teacupful of water. Bake the patties in a quick oven, basting them often. When cooked arrange them on a hot dish, garnish with fried parsley, and serve with a sauceboatful of clear gravy.
A baked veal loaf mixture shaped into small ovals rather than a single loaf. Lean ground veal dries out fast, so the salt pork, the butter and the frequent basting are structural, not decorative.
- Quick ovenRead this as roughly 400-425F. At that heat small patties should be done in about 20-25 minutes; ground veal should reach 160F internally.
- A teacupfulA teacup is usually reckoned at about 3/4 cup, so the half teacupful here is roughly 1/3 cup of water. It is there to make steam and to become the basting liquid, so top it up if the dish goes dry before the patties are cooked.
- The pepperA full tablespoon of pepper to four pounds of meat is very forward by current taste; a teaspoon or two is closer to what most cooks would want. The tablespoon of salt works out near one percent by weight and is about right.
- One grated nutmegA whole nutmeg yields roughly two to three teaspoons grated, which will dominate. Half a nutmeg, or about a teaspoon of freshly grated, gives the intended warmth without turning the meat into forcemeat for a terrine.
- Salt porkQuarter-pound of salt pork here is the fat source that keeps lean veal from going chalky. Unsmoked bacon or fatback minced fine does the same job; do not substitute lean pork.
- Soda crackersThese are plain unsweetened crackers of the saltine type. Six give something in the region of a quarter to half a cup of crumbs, used entirely as a topping in this recipe rather than as a binder in the mix.
- Clear gravyGenerally an unthickened, strained brown gravy or stock reduced to a light body rather than a floured sauce. The pan liquid from the baking dish, degreased and reduced, is the obvious source.
- Fried parsleyFlat sprigs dropped into hot fat for a few seconds until crisp and still green. They scorch and turn bitter almost immediately, so pull them the moment the sizzling slows.
- YieldFour pounds of meat will make well over a dozen small patties, enough to serve eight or so. The mixture halves without trouble.
Veal was the workhorse meat of American hotel cookery around 1900: mild, pale, and endlessly adaptable to the French repertoire that grand hotels were expected to serve. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maitre d'hotel whose name carries this 1896 collection, was compiling as much for the household cook as for the trade, and dishes like this one sit in the book precisely because they take a large economical cut and turn it into something that can be plated individually and garnished. The technique is the old forcemeat tradition thinned out for domestic use. Fried parsley as a garnish was ubiquitous in late Victorian and Edwardian service.