Veal Loaf
1 tablespoon chopped Parsley 1 tablespoon lemon juice, if desired cup dry crumbs 2 1/2 tablespoons tomato catsup. cup milk 1 egg 1 onion Select lean veal, remove skin and membrane, chop fine with salt pork. Add crumbs, seasoning. Brown minced onion in little fat, before adding. Beat egg slightly, add with milk, mix well. Pack in a bread pan, smooth evenly on top and bake in slow oven two hours, basting frequently with 1/4 cup bacon fat. Meat may be shaped into loaf in roaster and baked in oven. May be served hot, with brown gravy or tomato sauce, or may be used cold. 2 pounds veal (from round) Salt
A plain ground-veal loaf of the kind that filled out a meat budget when veal shoulder and round were cheap. The ingredient list has come down to us garbled, so a few amounts need judgment.
- The missing fractionsThe original almost certainly read "½ cup dry crumbs" and "½ cup milk," but the fractions have dropped out of the text and cannot be recovered with certainty. For 2 lb of chopped veal, ½ cup dry crumbs and ½ cup milk give a loaf that slices; a full cup of each will be soft and bready.
- Salt pork quantityThe recipe calls for chopping the veal with salt pork but never says how much. Veal round is very lean and needs the fat; 3 to 4 oz per 2 lb of veal is a workable amount. Reduce the added salt accordingly.
- Slow ovenRoughly 300 to 325F. Two hours in that range suits a loaf of this size, but go by an internal temperature of 160F at the centre rather than the clock — modern grinds are finer and cook faster than hand-chopped meat.
- Chopping versus grinding"Chop fine" meant a chopping bowl and knife, which leaves a coarser, looser texture than a meat grinder and much looser than a food processor. If you use a processor, pulse rather than run it, or the loaf turns pasty.
- BastingThe bacon fat is not optional decoration; it is what keeps lean veal from drying. Baste every 20 to 30 minutes, or lay a few strips of bacon over the top and skip the basting.
- Bread pan versus free-formA loaf pan steams the sides and gives a paler, moister result; shaping it free-form in a roaster, as the recipe permits, browns all round and renders more fat. Either works, but a free-form loaf will be done somewhat sooner than two hours.
- Yield and cold serviceAbout six to eight servings. The cold use is the point of the dish as much as the hot — chill it in the pan under a weight overnight and it slices cleanly for sandwiches.
The Metropolitan Cook Book was not sold but given away: Metropolitan Life Insurance Company printed it in enormous numbers through the first half of the twentieth century and distributed it free to policyholders, often handed over by the agent who came to collect the weekly premium. Its recipes are chosen accordingly — economical, standardised, aimed at a household stretching cheaper cuts, and part of the same welfare-and-hygiene campaign that had the company mailing out pamphlets on tuberculosis and infant feeding. A veal loaf fits that brief exactly. Veal from the round is lean and, before refrigeration was universal, a loaf was a way to use a chopped quantity of it up safely, serve it hot on the first day with gravy and cold on the second, and lose nothing. The catsup and lemon juice here appear to be doing the work of sharpening veal's mildness.