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Calf's Head A L'Anglaise
Procure a fine, fat, white, scalded calf's head; bone it in the manner described for preparing mock-turtle soup; then put in a large panful of cold water, in order that it may be thoroughly cleansed, after which, put on fire in a large stewpan with cold water, and as soon as it boils, skim it well; then let it boil five minutes; take up and put into cold water to cool. Next, drain it on a napkin, cut the ears out, leaving sufficient base around them to allow them to stand up; cut the cheeks, etc., into pieces two inches square, and pare off any rough cuticles there may be about them. Rub each piece of calf's head with lemon juice; place the whole, including the tongue, in a large stewpan, with carrot, onion, celery, parsley roots, sweet basil, a garnished fagot of parsley and four cloves, and two blades of mace; moisten with half bottle of sherry or Madeira, and two ladlesful of good white stock, and set the whole to braize gently on a moderate fire for two hours. When the pieces of calf's head are done, drain them upon a napkin, and dish them up in a close circle round the tongue, which has been trimmed, glazed, and placed in the center of dish. Then cut the brains into scollops, and place them in the flanks, and at each end place the ears, trimmed and curled; pour some parsley and butter over the remove, and send to table.
This is grand-hotel cookery written for a kitchen with a butcher attached, and the language assumes a professional reader. The essentials translate, but the sourcing does not.
- Sourcing the head"Scalded" means the hair has already been loosened and scraped off by the butcher, and "bone it" assumes you can do the job yourself. Any calf's head today has to be ordered well in advance from a halal, kosher, Latin American or old-style butcher, and you should ask for it split, scalded and boned, with the tongue and ears left attached.
- Brains and current rulesBovine brain and spinal cord are classed as specified risk material in the UK and EU because of BSE, and sale is restricted or prohibited depending on the animal's age. In the United States brains from young cattle are still sold in some markets. Check what is legal where you are; if brains are not available, the dish holds together without the scollops in the flanks.
- The blanch is not optionalThe blanch -- The five-minute boil and the plunge into cold water clean the head and firm the gelatinous meat so it can be cut into clean two-inch squares and pared; the recipe treats it as a necessary step rather than an option.
- Braising heat"Gently on a moderate fire" means a bare shiver, not a boil. The recipe is written for the stovetop; use the lowest setting that keeps the surface trembling, for the full two hours. A rolling braise turns the collagen-heavy cheek to mush and clouds the liquid.
- Wine and stock quantitiesHalf a bottle of sherry or Madeira is about 375 ml by modern bottle sizes. The size of a period kitchen ladle is not fixed, so "two ladlesful" of white stock cannot be converted reliably; the recipe says only to moisten, so add stock accordingly, and use a dry amontillado or Sercial rather than a sweet cream sherry.
- Garnished fagot and blades of maceA garnished fagot is a bouquet garni, here parsley stalks tied with the herbs. A blade of mace is a whole piece of the lacy aril around the nutmeg; two blades are worth roughly a quarter to a half teaspoon of ground mace, depending on their size, though the ground spice will cloud the braise.
- "Parsley and butter"In English usage this is a sauce, not melted butter with herbs in it: a thin butter-and-flour sauce loosened with the cooking liquor or milk, finished with a good handful of chopped parsley and lemon. Strain and reduce some of the braising liquid to make it rather than starting fresh.
- Glazing the tongueGlazing means brushing with reduced, syrupy stock until it shines. Peel the tongue while it is still hot, or the skin will not come away.
- Yield and the word "remove"A boned calf's head makes a large dish, intended for a table rather than a plate. A remove is the dish that replaced the soup or fish on a formal service, so this was designed to arrive as a set piece on a large oval platter, not as a plated portion.
The phrase a l'anglaise flags this as the English treatment of a head that French kitchens more often served en tortue or turned into mock turtle soup, and the recipe itself points the reader to the mock-turtle method for boning. Calf's head was standard nineteenth-century material: cheap, enormously gelatinous, and prized precisely for the wobbly, tongue-and-ears theatre of the finished platter. Its long association with mock turtle soup, in which the gelatin of the head stood in for the costly green turtle, is what kept it in cookbooks long after other offal fell away. Head cookery survived in Britain and America into the early twentieth century and then vanished quickly, pushed out by the growth of butchered cuts and changing squeamishness.