Important: Safety Warning
This recipe calls for animal brains or related nervous-system tissue. Cattle brain and spinal tissue can transmit bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the cause of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, which is fatal and has no treatment.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Salsify Fritters
3 heads salsify, lemon juice, salt, 2 tablespoons milk, 1 tablespoon melted Crisco, fried parsley, 4 tablespoons flour, and 2 eggs. Wash, scrape, and soak the salsify in cold water seasoned with salt and lemon juice to taste. Boil in salted, acidulated water until tender. Take it up when done, drain, and cut the salsify into pieces all the same size. Sieve the flour into a basin, work in the yolks of the eggs, the milk, and the melted Crisco. Beat to a smooth batter, season with salt and pepper to taste. When ready to fry, beat up the whites of eggs very stiffly and stir them lightly into batter. Drop the salsify into the batter, then into hot Crisco and fry to a golden brown color. Take up, drain, and serve garnished with fried parsley. Calf's Head, Vinaigrette Clean and scald 1/2 a calf's head. Cover with water and boil 1/2 an hour, then plunge into cold water. When cool, remove meat and cut in small squares. Make a roux of 1 tablespoon Crisco and 2 tablespoons flour cooked thoroughly; add 4 cloves, 3 whole peppers, small onion, carrot, 2 bay leaves, dash of thyme, and 2 tablespoons strong vinegar. Add the meat. Simmer 2 hours; remove into deep dish and cover with vinaigrette sauce, which is made with 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon paprika, dash white pepper mixed with 3 tablespoons tarragon or plain vinegar. Add 6 tablespoons olive oil, 1 tablespoon gherkins, and 1 teaspoon each chives and parsley all chopped very fine, and 1 tablespoon minced green pepper. Blend well before pouring over meat. This may be served either hot or cold. Garnish with cucumber pickles cut into fan shapes.
Two dishes run together on one page: a straightforward vegetable fritter, and a calf's head preparation that no longer belongs in a working kitchen. The notes below cover the fritter batter and technique, and explain the problem with the second half.
- The calf's head is the reason for the cautionA half calf's head may carry brain and skull-adherent nervous tissue, the material through which BSE is transmitted and the cause of variant CJD in humans. In many jurisdictions bovine skull and brain are controlled as specified risk material, chiefly in older animals, and ordinary cooking does not inactivate the agent. Skip that recipe entirely; the vinaigrette sauce is fine on its own over cooked vegetables or poached fish.
- "3 heads salsify" is ambiguousSalsify is a root, not a head; the writer almost certainly means three roots or three bunches. Figure on about 1 lb of trimmed root for four people as fritters, which is roughly 6 to 8 medium roots.
- Why the acidulated water mattersScraped salsify browns within minutes and its cut surfaces go grey-black in plain water. The lemon juice in both the soaking water and the cooking water is doing real work, not seasoning — keep the roots submerged the whole time. Boil 15 to 25 minutes depending on thickness, until a knife slides in easily.
- CriscoIntroduced in 1911 and heavily promoted through cookbooks like this one, it was hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Modern Crisco is reformulated and any neutral oil or shortening works; melted butter in the batter gives better flavour.
- Frying temperatureThe original says only "hot Crisco." Hold the fat at 365 to 375F. Below that the batter absorbs grease and slides off the wet salsify; above it the coating colours before the interior sets.
- Fold, do not stirThe whites go in at the last moment and the batter should be used immediately — it deflates within a few minutes. Pat the boiled salsify dry before dipping or the batter will not cling.
- Fried parsleyDry sprigs, dropped into the same hot fat for 10 to 15 seconds, until they stop sputtering and turn deep green. Wet parsley will spit violently. Drain on paper and salt at once.
- YieldThe batter as given coats about 1 lb of salsify and serves four as a side dish or light supper course.
Salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius) was a standard kitchen-garden root in nineteenth-century America and England, and its common English name, oyster plant, comes from the faintly marine sweetness cooks claimed to find in it — a resemblance often asserted and rarely convincing. It appears constantly in books of this period as a winter vegetable that could be stretched into mock oyster fritters and mock oyster soup when the real thing was out of reach or out of season. A Calendar of Dinners was published by Procter and Gamble to put Crisco into every stage of a day's menu. The calf's head beside it is a reminder of how completely offal has left the American table; a split head, scalded and picked over for the cheek, tongue and brain, was an economical dish in its day and is now, in some jurisdictions, subject to regulation.