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Veal Omelet
Mrs. J. S. Gano.
Three pounds of lean veal, two eggs, six small butter crackers, one tablespoon of thyme, one of salt, one of pepper, two of milk; knead it like bread, and bake it two hours in a slow oven, basting it with butter often, then slice for tea.
Despite the name, this is a baked veal loaf, sliced cold for the tea table. The eggs and cracker crumbs are the whole binding system, so the meat has to be finely ground and the mixture worked until it holds together.
- Not an omeletSome nineteenth-century American cookbooks applied "omelet" to egg-bound meat mixtures of this kind. Expect a firm loaf that slices clean when cold, closer to a pate than to a modern meatloaf.
- The vealBuy 3 lb lean veal shoulder ground twice, or grind it yourself; the coarse supermarket grind will crumble when sliced. Trim sinew before grinding, since it will not break down in a slow bake.
- Butter crackersA plain, unsweetened hard cracker, generally larger and thicker than a modern saltine. Six of them crush to roughly 1/2 to 2/3 cup of fine crumbs, which is what to aim for rather than counting crackers.
- Season with restraintA full tablespoon of pepper is far more than most palates want now; 1 to 2 teaspoons is closer to the mark. The tablespoon of salt is about right for 3 lb of meat, and the tablespoon of thyme should be dried and rubbed, not fresh sprigs.
- Two tablespoons of milk is not muchThe mixture will feel stiff and dry, which is why the instruction says to knead it like bread. Work it thoroughly for a minute or two so the proteins bind; add milk a spoonful at a time only if it refuses to hold a shape.
- Slow ovenRead that as somewhere in the 275-325F range; 300F is a reasonable choice. Form the loaf on a shallow baking pan or in a loaf tin and give it the full two hours, basting with melted butter every 20 minutes or so to keep the surface from drying to leather.
- DonenessGround veal should reach 160F at the center on an instant-read thermometer. At 300F a 3 lb loaf will usually get there before two hours are up, so check at 90 minutes.
- Serving and yieldChill the loaf completely, ideally overnight under light weight, before slicing; warm veal loaf falls apart. It serves eight to ten as a cold cut, with mustard or a sharp pickle.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Chicago in the 1870s from contributed recipes and sold for charity, with contributors drawn from Chicago and other cities, which is why many entries carry a signature like Mrs. J. S. Gano's rather than a house style. Cold veal loaf was a fixture of exactly the meal named in the last line: "tea," the light evening supper of sliced meats, bread and preserves that middle-class American households ate when dinner had been taken at midday. Veal is often said to have been plentiful and cheap in a dairying country, bull calves being surplus, and a loaf like this stretched three pounds of it across several days with no reheating required. The word "omelet" here reflects an older and broader usage, in which any dish bound and set with beaten egg could take the name; recipe titles of the period are full of such loaves called omelets, puddings or cheeses regardless of what a modern cook would expect from the word.