Tag: meat

Cooking Techniques · Recipe Collections · The Vintage Kitchen

How We Made Veal Birds

VintageJenny

Welcome to Lesson 29 of When Sue Began to Cook, a Twenties story cookbook for children. This book continues the story of Sue and her best friend Ruth Ann. They learn to cook under the watchful eye of Sue’s mother Bettina. This week she showed them how to make Veal Birds. Bettina is herself a central character in a set of cookbooks by Louise Bennett Weaver. If you’re new to the series, click the book title to be transported back to Lesson 1.

This week Sue and Ruth Ann tell how they made Veal Birds. Veal steaks are no longer available in my local grocery stores, so if I were going to make this I would probably use chicken breast. First I’d cut it to 1/2-inch thickness, and then follow the recipe to see what happens.

Since this is the first time Sue learns to make a stuffed and tied piece of meat, she is quite chatty in the recipe. The recipe itself isn’t long, but the descriptions are. A highlighter might be useful to mark the important parts if you find yourself getting lost in the story of how Sue made Veal Birds.

Notes from Sue’s Diary This Week:

Veal Birds are a company dish at our house. We wanted to make them today because Uncle John and Aunt Lucy were coming in to shop this morning and take Robin and Ruth Ann and me out to the farm to stay over Sunday. School’s out, and we can do lots of nice things we’ve planned to do.

But we’ll go right on with our cooking lessons. I intend to practice the dishes I’ve learned to make over and over, so I’ll never forget them!

I am writing this while we’re waiting for Uncle John and Aunt Lucy. The table is all set, and our Veal Birds are in the oven keeping hot.

Mother says Veal Birds are very convenient to have for company. She says they can be prepared and cooked in the early morning and then reheated. Some people serve them cold in very hot weather. Here come the folks so I must stop.

Print Recipe

Veal Birds

From When Sue Began to Cook by Louise Bennett Weaver
Course: Dinner
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Bettina, frying, meats, Ruth Ann, Sue, veal
Servings: 4

Equipment

  • 1 Oven safe frying pan with oven-safe lid

Ingredients

  • 1 lb veal steak cut 1/2 inch thick
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 cups fresh bread crumbs (soft, not hard)
  • 2 tbsp salt pork chopped very fine
  • 1 tbsp parsley chopped very fine
  • 1 tbsp green pepper chopped fine (minced)
  • ½ tsp paprika
  • ¼ tsp celery salt
  • 2 tbsp butter, melted
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 2 tbsp water, cold
  • 4 tbsp bacon grease
  • ½ cup water

Instructions

  • We wiped off our veal with a clean cloth dipped in cold water, and then cut it into four nice pieces. Then we made little cuts across each piece of meat both ways with a knife. Mother told us this would make it lie flat. In cutting, we hammered it down good. Then we sprinkled the salt on both sides of the meat.
  • Next we cut the salt pork and the parsley and the green pepper in quite small pieces so that we could measure it, and then we put it all in the chopping bowl and chopped it up quite fine.
  • Then we each put our fresh bread crumbs, salt pork, parsley, green pepper, paprika, celery salt, melted butter, beaten egg and two tablespoons of water in a mixing bowl and mixed it all up with a spoon. We put a fourth of this mixture on top of each piece of meat. Then Mother showed us how to roll up each piece and tie it with a nice white string so that the dressing would stay inside.
  • The birds were all ready then, so we each put the bacon grease in a deep frying pan and let it get good and hot. Then we put the birds in and let them brown on all sides. After they were good and brown, we poured the water in the pan. Then we covered the pan with a lid and put it in the oven. We let the birds cook in the oven (350 – 375℉) for about forty-five minutes. Mother showed us how to try them with a fork to see if they were good and tender. They were, so she had us take them out and cut the string with the scissors and take it off. Then we put the birds back in the frying pan to keep hot till they were needed.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Meat Loaf

VintageJenny

On their 18th Saturday cooking lesson, Sue makes Meat Loaf. This is a classic recipe that may be close to the one you know. We are cruising through the 1924 book When Sue Began to Cook, by Louise Weaver and Helen LeCron. If you’re just finding this series and you want to start at the beginning of Sue’s story, click the linked book title to go to the beginning.

Notes from Sue’s Diary on the Best Kitchen Helpers

“Can you guess the names of my two favorite kitchen helpers?” Mother asked us this morning when our lesson began.

(The answer ought to have been “Robin and Sue” but I somehow knew that wasn’t it.)

“Besides my two youngsters of course,” Mother went on with a twinkle in her eye. “Well, I’m thinking of my faithful food chopper and my kind kitchen scissors. I couldn’t keep house without them. Of course we had this meat ground up at the meat market (that is the easiest way when it’s possible) but Sue knows how often I grind up leftover meat for croquettes and meat cakes, and of course I always use the food chopper.”

“The chopper’s good for raisins and figs and dates to go in cookies, too,” I suggested.

“Yes, and for cheese when it isn’t too fresh. It’s much easier to grind it than to grate it. And it’s good for dry bread and crackers, too.”

I nodded my head. It’s my job to keep Mother’s crumb-jar filled. I take the stale ends of the bread from the bread box and put them through the chopper and then into the glass jar we keep for that purpose. “You chop cabbage in the food chopper, too, don’t you Mother?” I added, remembering the cole slaw we had for dinner one day last week.

“Yes, and for dozens of other things. But the kitchen scissors are just as convenient. I use them to cut up parsley and to shred lettuce, and to cut up green and red peppers for garnishing.”

“And for cutting off the pie dough around the edge of the pan,” I said.

“Yes, and for cutting up the fruit for salad or for a fruit cup,” Mother said. “You know the food chopper would press too much juice out of the fruits.”

“But how in the world do you ever get the chopper clean after you’ve used it, Aunt Bettina?” asked Ruth Ann.

“Well, after this lesson I’ll show you girls just how to take it apart and put it together again,” Mother answered. “And of course it has to be washed just like any other kitchen tool. But to clean it quickly I always run a piece of dry bread through it. In fact, I never use it for anything without putting a piece of bread through first. The bread takes up the odors of any stray piece of food that may have lodged in it.”

Print Recipe

Sue’s Meat Loaf

Recipe from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.

Ingredients

  • 2 cups round steak, ground up The butcher ground it. (We would call this hamburger.)
  • ½ cup pork butt, ground up The butcher ground it. (Ground pork would work fine. ¼ lb is plenty.)
  • 1 cup cracker crumbs
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp pepper
  • ¼ tsp celery salt or use ⅛ tsp celery seed to limit the salt
  • 1 tbsp onion, chopped fine
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten
  • ½ cup milk
  • 1 tbsp melted butter

Instructions

  • Mother had us each put our round steak, pork butt, cracker crumbs, salt, pepper, celery, salt and onion in a big bowl and mix it all up together as well as we could with a spoon.
  • Then we beat the egg and added the milk and poured that into the bowl, too. We mixed it all just as well as we could.
  • Then we buttered a loaf-cake pan. We dipped a little clean brown piece of paper in some butter to do it. And then we emptied our meat mixture into the cake pan. Mother had us wash our hands and then pat the meat mixture into kind of a loaf shape in the pan.
  • Then we melted the butter and poured it all over the top of the loaf to make it get brown and nice.
  • We each popped our loaf into a hot oven and turned down the heat to make a moderate oven of it. And then we baked our loaves forty-five minutes by the clock. When we took the meat out, it was crusty and brown, and looked dee-licious!
    Note: Hot oven = 425 degrees, Moderate oven = 375 degrees.