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Calf's Head with Oysters
Boil half a calf's head in the usual way (see CALF'S HEAD, BOILED), and only just cover it with water, flavouring it with two onions stuck with five or six cloves, two bay-leaves, a bunch of parsley, a sprig of marjoram and thyme, and a little salt and cayenne. When the head is tender, take it out, strain the liquor, thicken a large breakfast-cupful of it with a dessert-spoonful of flour, and add the liquor from two dozen oysters, and a breakfast-cupful of milk. Put in the head and simmer again for half an hour. Just before serving, put in the oysters; let them get hot, but do not allow them to boil or they will be hard. Serve with the oysters round the dish. Time, two hours. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A Victorian recipe that assumes you have already boiled half a calf's head and have its cooking liquor to hand. The whole dish hinges on the last thirty seconds.
- The oystersAdd them off the boil and let them warm through for a minute or two at most. Cassell's warning is accurate: oysters held at a simmer tighten into rubber within a few minutes, and there is no recovering them.
- Breakfast-cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup, generally reckoned at 8 to 10 fl oz. Treat it as a generous cup and adjust the sauce by eye; the flour quantity assumes a fairly thin, pourable liquid.
- Dessert-spoonfulTwo teaspoons, midway between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. The flour goes into the cupful of stock alone, and is then let down with the oyster liquor and a second cupful of milk, so the finished sauce has only a light body -- which appears to be the intention.
- Sourcing the headButchers no longer break out calves' heads as a matter of course, and few supermarkets will have seen one. Order in advance from a halal or traditional butcher, or build the dish on veal cheeks, shank or tongue for a comparable gelatinous texture, allowing for the fact that cooking times differ -- tongue especially will want longer.
- The liquor is the sauceBecause the head is only just covered with water, the cooking liquid comes out concentrated and heavily gelatinous. Strain it and skim the fat before thickening, or the finished sauce will be greasy.
- Oyster liquorTwo dozen oysters will give anything from half a cup to a cupful of liquor, depending on their size. Strain it through muslin to catch shell grit, and add it to the sauce rather than the pot of oysters so it has time to cook out.
- SeasoningCayenne, not black pepper, is doing the work of sharpening a very rich, bland base. A little lemon juice or a splash of dry sherry stirred in at the end is period-appropriate and helps the same way.
- Timing and yieldThe book gives only 'Time, two hours', and does not say whether that covers the initial boiling alone or includes the half-hour simmer in the sauce; allow for the latter separately if in doubt. It serves six or seven as one course of a larger meal, and rather fewer as a main dish.
Calf's head was one of the great set pieces of nineteenth-century English cookery — cheap, gelatinous, and capable of being dressed a dozen ways, from mock turtle soup to the tête de veau en tortue of French kitchens. Pairing it with oysters made sense on both economic and culinary grounds: oysters were still a working household ingredient in Britain well into the 1880s, sold by the barrel and used freely as a garnish or sauce base, and their brine cut through the head's heavy, sticky richness. Cassell's, first issued in the 1870s and reprinted in expanded form for decades after, catalogued this kind of dish exhaustively because the ordinary middle-class cook was expected to use the whole animal.