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Veal Pates
Mrs. H. Baird.
Chop some cold veal fine, moisten with cream and an egg, beaten; season with salt, sweet marjoram, and powdered mace; then make up with the hands in the shape of cones or patty-cakes, and roll in crumbs.
Either fry in a buttered pan or bake in a hot oven.
A leftover dish rather than a project: cooked veal from a roast, bound with egg and cream and re-formed into cakes. The quantities are left entirely to the cook, so the binding is the thing to get right.
- The hinge: bind, don't slackenAdd the cream a spoonful at a time. For every 2 cups of finely chopped cooked veal, one egg and about 2 tablespoons of cream is enough to make a mixture that holds a cone shape without slumping. Too much cream and the cakes spread in the pan.
- "Pates" here means pattiesThis is not pâté in the modern sense of a smooth spreadable terrine. In 19th-century American books the word covers small shaped meat cakes and pastry cases alike; chop the veal with a knife to a coarse mince rather than reducing it to paste in a processor.
- Cold vealThe recipe assumes the remains of a roast or boiled joint. Cooked chicken or turkey behaves the same way. Do not substitute raw ground veal — the mixture is built around meat that already has its structure set.
- A hot ovenRead this as 400–425F. Bake on a greased or parchment-lined sheet, 20–25 minutes, turning once, until the crumbs are browned. Fried, they need 3–4 minutes a side in butter over medium heat.
- Sweet marjoram and maceBoth were standard veal seasonings and are milder than their modern reputations suggest. Use about 1 teaspoon dried marjoram and a scant 1/4 teaspoon ground mace per 2 cups of meat; mace turns soapy in quantity. Nutmeg is the usual substitute for mace, used sparingly.
- CrumbsDry breadcrumbs, rather than the coarse panko sort, give a smoother crust. Rolling the cakes and then chilling them 20 minutes helps the coating stay put in the pan.
- Reheating cooked meatBecause the veal is already cooked and then bound with raw egg, take the cakes to 165F at the centre. This is also the point where the egg has fully set and the cakes will slice cleanly.
- YieldTwo cups of chopped veal makes six to eight cakes — a light supper for three or four with potatoes and a sharp sauce.
Recipes like this one belong to a whole class of Victorian cookery aimed at the second and third appearance of a joint of meat, at a time when a household bought a large cut and was expected to make it last without waste. Veal was far more common on American tables in the 1870s than it is now, and cold veal in particular was regarded as dull on its own, so cookbooks are thick with ways to disguise it: minced in cakes, in scallops, in curries, potted with butter. The Home Cook Book, compiled in Chicago in the 1870s from contributions by named local women, is a fundraising community cookbook, and Mrs. H. Baird's entry has the characteristic shape of that genre — one experienced cook for another who is assumed to know what a stiff mixture feels like. The pairing of mace and sweet marjoram with veal is older still, an English seasoning convention of long standing carried into American kitchens.