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Lamb Stove
Split a lamb's head in halves, wash it thoroughly, blanch it, put it into a stewpan, with as much good stock as will completely cover it, and let it simmer very gently for two hours. Pick and wash three handfuls of spinach, put it with the stew, and add a table-spoonful of finely-minced parsley, two or three green onions, a tea-spoonful of salt, and half a tea-spoonful of pepper. Simmer for twenty minutes longer, and serve all on the same dish. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A plain boiled-and-greened dish built on a cut you now have to ask for by name. Nothing here is difficult, but the head does the work and the seasoning is deliberately restrained.
- Sourcing the headA whole lamb's head, split, is a special order from a halal or traditional butcher; ask for it skinned, with the eyes removed and the brain taken out or reserved separately. In the UK and EU, sheep skulls from animals over a certain age are specified risk material and may not be sold, so you will be offered a young lamb's head or nothing.
- Blanch means blanchCover the halves with cold water, bring to the boil, drain and rinse away the grey scum, then start again with fresh stock. Skipping this leaves a cloudy, muddy-tasting broth that twenty minutes of spinach will not rescue.
- "Simmer very gently"Bare tremble, lid ajar, for the full two hours. A rolling boil shreds the cheek and tongue meat off the bone into the liquid and toughens what is left; the meat should come away in one piece when lifted.
- Three handfuls of spinachThe measure is vague; reckon on somewhere around 8-12 oz (225-350 g) of untrimmed leaf spinach, which cooks down to very little. Modern bagged baby spinach will collapse to nothing in twenty minutes; use large-leaf spinach and add it in the last five to ten minutes instead.
- Green onionsSpring onions or scallions, whites and greens, sliced. Two or three whole ones for a dish this size is a light hand; the recipe is not trying to taste of onion.
- Stock"Good stock" in a book of this period means a general household meat broth rather than anything more specific. Use unsalted or low-salt stock, since the teaspoon of salt is measured against the finished quantity and shop stock is already seasoned.
- Serving"All on the same dish" means the head halves set on the spinach with a ladle of the broth over. Boiled potatoes and bread suit it; the tongue and cheek are the prizes, and brains, if you have them, are often cooked separately rather than in this pot.
- Cost and yieldOne shilling and sixpence covers the head and the stock, a modest sum in keeping with the head being one of the cheapest parts of the carcass. Two to three portions is the recipe's own statement, and holds if the head is served whole with sides.
Cassell's gives this the same matter-of-fact treatment as a joint, and the head was among the cheapest parts of the carcass. "Stove" here is the older English culinary sense of the word, meaning something cooked slowly in a closed vessel; it is usually linked with Dutch stoven and with "stew", though the relationship between the Germanic and Romance forms is disputed rather than settled. Sheep's-head broths of this kind are recorded across Britain and were particularly associated with Scotland, where singed sheep's head was a tavern staple in Edinburgh well into the nineteenth century. The pairing with spinach and parsley is a green freshening of a heavy, gelatinous broth. Head dishes largely receded from British home cooking after the mid-twentieth century, and the BSE-era controls of the 1990s ended the trade in older sheep's heads, which is why the cut is now unfamiliar rather than merely unfashionable.