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Nutmeg
Sweet marjoram, 1 Paprika teaspoonful teaspoonful Chop the meat fine, removing all gristle. Season, moisten with the stock, and press into a small bread-pan. Put into the oven for a few minutes.
When cold, slice.
By the long process of soup-making, flavor has been taken from the meat, but it still has food value. It should be highly seasoned to make it palatable.
This is one of the salvage recipes that follow a soup-making chapter: the boiled meat left in the stockpot, chopped, seasoned hard, and pressed into a loaf to be sliced cold. The text as printed has lost part of its ingredient list, so read it as a method rather than a formula.
- The ingredient list is incompleteOnly sweet marjoram and paprika survive here, each at a teaspoonful, and the words have come through jumbled in this transcription. Other seasonings, salt and pepper at least, have probably been lost; season by taste as you go.
- Bread-panThe recipe specifies only a small bread-pan; a modern small loaf tin will serve. Line it so the pressed loaf will lift out whole.
- Oven for a few minutesThe recipe asks only for a few minutes in the oven; the meat is already cooked, so this is a brief warming through rather than further cooking, and longer will only dry it out.
- The stock has to be gelatinousThis is the hinge. The loaf holds together because stock made from bones sets on cooling. Thin or defatted commercial broth will not bind it, and the slices will crumble.
- Press it properlyWeight the top with a plate and a can or two while it chills. Without pressure the loaf will be full of gaps and impossible to slice thin.
- Chill in the refrigerator, not on the counterThe recipe only says "when cold". Cooked meat chopped fine and held at room temperature is exactly the condition that favours bacterial growth; get it into the refrigerator once it stops steaming, and use it within two or three days.
- Season more than feels rightThe note about flavour being drawn out by long boiling is accurate. Cold food also reads as blander than warm, so taste the mixture warm and then push the seasoning further.
- Yield and servingServing -- No quantity or yield is given; make as much as the boiled meat provides and fit the pan to it. It is a sandwich and cold-plate dish, good with mustard or a sharp pickle.
Recipes of this kind belong to the household economy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when soup was made from a large piece of meat simmered for hours and the cook was left with a quantity of pale, exhausted beef. Pressed meat -- also sold commercially as potted or pressed beef -- was the standard answer: chop, season aggressively, bind with the gelatinous stock, and set it cold so it can be sliced like a terrine. The reasoning stated here, that boiling removes flavour but not food value, may perhaps be read as reflecting the period's interest in nutritional science, in which protein was counted and thrift was a virtue with a chemical justification, though that is interpretation rather than something the recipe states. The title "Nutmeg" may well belong to a neighbouring entry or to the missing part of the seasoning list rather than to the dish itself.