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Calf's Tails
Cut four calf's tails in pieces an inch and a half long, fry them in boiling fat till they are lightly browned, then stew them in good gravy till they are quite tender. Serve them with thick brown sauce round them, and some stewed mushrooms on a separate dish. When mushrooms cannot be obtained, put a tea-spoonful of ketchup into the gravy. Time to stew, two hours. Probable cost, 9d. each. Sufficient for six persons.
A braise of the plainest kind, and the only real difficulty is finding the meat. Two points in the text mean something different now than they did in 1880.
- Calf's tails, and what to use insteadVeal tails are a special-order item from a butcher who breaks down whole calves. Oxtail is the direct substitute and behaves the same way, though beef tails are larger and fattier and want closer to three hours. Reckon about 1 lb of tail per person, bone included, for a main course.
- Cut at the jointsOn a veal tail an inch and a half is about the length of a vertebra at the thicker end, though the segments shorten towards the tip. Feel for the joints and cut through the cartilage between them rather than sawing through bone; the pieces hold together far better in a two-hour stew.
- "Ketchup" is mushroom ketchupIn a Victorian English kitchen ketchup meant a thin, dark, salty mushroom or walnut extract, not tomato. A teaspoonful of mushroom ketchup, or failing that a small spoon of soy sauce plus a little anchovy, gives the savoury note intended. Tomato ketchup will sweeten the gravy in a way the recipe does not want.
- "Good gravy" means stockNot a thickened sauce but well-reduced brown veal or beef stock. Use enough to come two-thirds up the pieces, cover, and keep it at a bare simmer rather than a boil so the meat does not shred off the bone.
- Thick brown sauceA thick brown sauce of this period is a brown roux slackened with stock and reduced. The simplest modern route is to strain the braising liquid, skim the considerable fat, and reduce it hard until it coats a spoon.
- Oven or hobThe original assumes a stewpan on the range. A covered pot at 325F is steadier and needs no attention; test at two hours by pulling at a piece with a fork, and give it longer if it resists.
- The mushroomsThe recipe has them stewed separately and served on their own dish. Brown them in butter first, then let them cook down in a little stock.
- YieldFour veal tails for six people is a modest portion by current standards, and assumes several other dishes on the table. As a single main course with potatoes, four tails will feed three or four.
Tail is one of the cheapest cuts on any carcass and one of the most rewarding, being rich in collagen and bone that turns to gelatine under long wet heat. Cassell's quotes the cost as ninepence a tail, which puts the whole dish at three shillings for six — genuinely economical eating in a book that elsewhere prices turtle and truffles. Calf's tails appear because the dictionary's job was to have an entry for every usable part of the animal: the head, the feet, the sweetbreads, the ears, the tails. That completeness is why these books remain useful. The instruction to substitute a teaspoonful of ketchup when mushrooms are out of season is also a period marker, since mushroom ketchup was the standard bottled savouring of the English kitchen for most of the nineteenth century, well before tomato ketchup displaced the name entirely.