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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Calf's Head
Calf's head served whole is a favorite dish in England, but seldom seen on American tables. For those who have this preference a few hints about carving may be desirable. Place it on the platter with the face toward the right. Cut from left to right, through the middle of the check down to the bone, in several parallel slices of medium thickness; then separate them from the bone. Cut down at the back of the throat and slice the throat sweetbread. With the point of the knife cut out the gelatinous portion near the eye, and serve to those who desire it. There is a small portion of delicate lean meat to be found after removing the jawbone. Some are fond of the palate, which lies under the head. The tongue should be sliced, and a portion of this and of the brains offered to each person.
A set of carving directions for a whole calf’s head brought to the table, written for a dish the author already describes as rare among her readers. It is included here as a record, not as something to attempt.
- The brain is not soldControls on cattle brain and spinal tissue mean a butcher will not supply a head with the brain in it. What can be bought, and is still eaten, is the boned head meat, the cheek and the tongue, which is most of what these directions are actually dividing up.
- The first cut is the cheekParallel slices through the middle of the cheek down to the bone, then freed from it. Cheek is now sold as a cut in its own right and braised long and slow, and this page describes precisely where on the animal it sits and how it comes away.
- Throat sweetbread is the thymusThe page tells the carver to cut down behind the throat and slice it. There are two sweetbreads in an animal, the thymus in the throat and the pancreas further back, and both are now bought separately at a counter rather than carved off a head.
- The tongue is the familiar partSliced and shared out, exactly as it still is when a whole ox or calf tongue is brined, boiled and pressed. Of everything on this page, it is the one portion a modern eater is likely to have met.
- The palate was prizedSome are fond of the palate, which lies under the head, says the page, and offers no further comment. It is a reminder that the carver was expected to know not just the anatomy but which parts individual guests would ask for.
- The author concedes it is unusualThe head served whole is called a favourite dish in England but seldom seen on American tables. This was already a minority dish for the book’s own readers, which is why the directions begin by assuming you need persuading.
The real subject of this page is not the calf but the carver’s social role. The head arrives whole, face to the right, and is taken apart in front of the company, and almost every instruction carries a judgment about people rather than meat: serve the portion near the eye to those who desire it, some are fond of the palate, offer a portion of this and of the brains to each person. The carver had to know the anatomy of the head and the preferences of everyone at the table, and had to allocate the delicacies between them in the open, quickly, while talking. That was the skill the book was teaching, and it is why a dish like this one, which almost nobody now encounters, was worth a page: it was the hardest test of the performance.