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, Mock Turtle Soup Of
Take half a calf's head with the skin on, remove the brains, wash it in two or three waters, and boil it gently for an hour and a half. Take off the skin, cut it and the flesh into pieces about an inch and a half square, and throw them into cold water. Drain, and put them into a saucepan, cover with stock, and let them simmer gently for another hour and a half. Put three quarts of nicely-flavoured stock into a separate stewpan, and with it a tea-spoonful of minced thyme, a tea-spoonful of marjoram, four bay-leaves, three dessert-spoonfuls of chopped parsley, half an ounce of whole pepper, half an ounce of salt, three onions with four cloves stuck in them, half a head of celery, and two table-spoonfuls of mushroom ketchup. Let these simmer slowly for two hours. Strain the liquor, thicken it with two table-spoonfuls of flour, mixed with a little cold water, and added gradually, then pour it into the same saucepan as the meat, add half a pint of sherry, eight or nine forcemeat balls (one for each person), the hard-boiled yolks of five eggs, and the juice of a lemon. Let all simmer for a few minutes, and serve. The forcemeat balls should be made by mixing well together the brains, a breakfast-cupful of finely-grated bread-crumbs, a little salt, pepper, nutmeg, and parsley, three ounces of butter, and two eggs. Form them into balls about the size of a nutmeg, fry them in boiling oil or dripping, and drain them from the fat before they are added to the soup. Time, four hours. Probable cost, 1s.6d. per quart, without the wine. Sufficient for ten or twelve persons. (See also TURTLE SOUP, MOCK.)