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Veal Cake
Miss Brokovski.
Butter your mould, then put in a layer of veal and ham, cut in thin slices, season it with cayenne, salt, a little beaten mace, some parsley, and a very little shalot, some eggs boiled hard and cut in slices; press it down and bake it, make a little veal gravy with a few shreds of isinglass. strain it, and add a small quantity of catsup, pour it over hot, when cold turn it out.
PICKLED PORK (EQUAL TO FRESH).
Mrs. Dr. Oliphant.
Let the meat cool thoroughly, cut into pieces four to six inches wide, weigh them and pack as tight as possible, salting lightly. Cover the meat with brine as strong as possible. Next day pour off a gallon of the brine and mix with it a tablespoonful of salt-petre for every hundred pounds of meat, and return it to the barrel. Let it stand one month, take out the meat and let it drain twelve hours. Put the brine into an iron kettle, add a quart of molasses or two pounds sugar, and boil till clear. When cold return the meat to the barrel and pour on the brine. Cover it close, and you will havo the sweetest meat you ever tasted.
Two entries share this page. The veal cake is a straightforward pressed meat loaf set in savoury jelly; the pickled pork that follows it is a barrel cure that cannot be reproduced safely from these directions.
- Why the pickled pork is out of boundsThe cure specifies brine "as strong as possible," one tablespoon of saltpetre per hundred pounds of meat, and a month standing in a barrel with no temperature given. Nitrate that low and that unevenly distributed does not reliably suppress Clostridium botulinum in a cool anaerobic brine, and reboiling and reusing the brine over meat that has drained twelve hours at room temperature compounds the risk. Curing today is done to measured cure-salt percentages at a controlled 36-40F; use a current recipe.
- The hinge of the veal cakeEverything depends on packing the mould tight so the slices bond into a sliceable block. Layer veal, ham and hard-boiled egg in thin overlapping courses, pressing each down firmly, and weight the whole thing while it cools so the jelly fills the gaps rather than pooling on top.
- Oven and vesselA buttered pudding basin, charlotte mould or small loaf tin of about a quart holds this well. The receipt says only "bake it" and gives no oven, timing or vessel; a moderate oven of 325-350F, covered, works, and baking in a water bath is a modern precaution rather than an instruction from the book. Cook until the veal reaches 145F on a thermometer -- about an hour for a quart mould in my experience. The ham is already cooked; the veal is what you are timing.
- IsinglassIsinglass is dried fish swim bladder, classically sturgeon though other fish were used, sold in shreds and used as gelatine. Powdered gelatine replaces it: roughly two and a half teaspoons to a pint of strained veal gravy should give a jelly firm enough to unmould cleanly.
- CatsupIn a book of this date catsup could mean tomato, mushroom or walnut; for a savoury gravy of this kind the thin dark mushroom or walnut sort is the likelier intention rather than a sweet tomato sauce. A tablespoon of mushroom ketchup, or Worcestershire at a pinch, gives that depth.
- Shalot and maceShalot is shallot; a teaspoon, minced very fine, is the "very little" meant here. Beaten mace is blade mace crushed to powder, close to nutmeg in character -- a quarter teaspoon is enough for a quart mould.
- Pour it over hotThe gravy must go in hot so it runs down through the packed layers before it sets. Add it in stages, tilting the mould, then chill at least six hours before turning out.
- Yield and keepingA quart mould serves six to eight as a cold lunch dish with pickles and bread. Being a cooked, jellied meat with no cure, it should be kept refrigerated and eaten within three days.
The Home Cook Book was compiled by "ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada" and published in 1877 in aid of the Hospital for Sick Children, and is generally credited as the first Canadian fundraising cookbook -- which is why nearly every receipt carries a contributor's name. Veal cake belongs to the large Victorian family of potted and pressed meats: cold, sliceable, made from ordinary butcher's cuts and held together by the natural gelatine of a calf's foot or by isinglass, and meant for the sideboard, the picnic hamper or a late supper. The word "cake" refers only to the shape, a block turned out of a mould, in the same sense as fish cake. The pickled pork beside it is a reminder of what the same kitchen was also expected to do: put down a hundred pounds of meat at a time in a cellar barrel, against a winter with no refrigeration.