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CALF'S HEAD (a la Sainte Menehould)
Take the remains of a calf's head boiled in the usual way. Cut them into slices, and pour over these a sauce prepared as follows. Dissolve an ounce of butter over the fire, and mix smoothly with it half a dessert-spoonful of flour; add a little salt and pepper, and either a quarter of a pint of water, or as much nicely-flavoured stock as will make the sauce as thick as cream. Simmer this over the fire for a few minutes. Draw the saucepan to the side, let its contents cool for half a minute, and stir into these the well-beaten yolks of three eggs. Cover the calf's head with the sauce and a thick layer of bread-crumbs. Pour over these a little clarified butter, and more bread-crumbs. Place the dish in a Dutch oven, brown the surface before the fire, and serve with sauce piquante. Time to make the sauce, half an hour. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A Victorian way of using up cold boiled calf's head: slices masked in a yolk-thickened velouté, crumbed, and browned. The technique transfers cleanly to any cooked, gelatinous cut, but several of the instructions need translating.
- Do not let the sauce boil after the yolks go inThe half-minute of cooling and the off-heat stirring are the whole point — three yolks in a quarter-pint of sauce will scramble instantly at a simmer. Stir a ladle of the hot sauce into the beaten yolks first, return the mixture to the pan off the heat, and keep it below about 180F.
- Sourcing the headWhole calf's head is a special order from a halal or traditional butcher and usually arrives split, sometimes skinned. Cooked ox cheek, pig's trotter meat, or a boiled veal breast behave much the same way under crumbs, being similarly gelatinous and mild.
- MeasuresA quarter of a pint is 5 imperial fluid ounces, about 2/3 cup; half a dessert-spoonful of flour is roughly a level teaspoon. One ounce of butter to one teaspoon of flour is a very light bind — the yolks are doing most of the thickening.
- "Boiled in the usual way"The book gives no method here, assuming the head has already been simmered until tender elsewhere; allow a long simmer (times in period sources vary considerably) and let it cool. Slice it cold; warm slices fall apart under the sauce.
- The Dutch ovenHere this means a reflector oven, an open-fronted metal box set facing the coals — not a cast-iron pot. Use a broiler on high with the dish 4 to 6 inches from the element, three to five minutes, watching constantly.
- Clarified butterMelted butter with the milk solids removed, so it browns the crumbs rather than scorching them. Skim melted butter and pour off the clear fat, leaving the white residue behind.
- Sauce piquanteConventionally a brown sauce sharpened with vinegar and shallots, often with chopped gherkins or capers. Something acidic is welcome beside a rich, gelatinous meat under an egg-bound sauce.
- YieldSix to eight as written, which assumes most of a head. Scale the sauce to the meat rather than the other way round — you want the slices masked, not swimming.
À la Sainte-Menehould takes its name from the town in the Marne, on the edge of the Argonne in Champagne, long associated with pigs' trotters cooked so slowly the bones soften, then coated in breadcrumbs and grilled. In French cookery the name came to be applied to the method as much as to the trotter: cooked, gelatinous meat, coated, crumbed and browned. The recipe is plainly a second-day dish, opening with "the remains" of a head boiled in the usual way, and the egg-yolk liaison and double layer of crumbs turn cold offcuts into something that arrives at table browned and respectable.