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Mutton Tails
Cut them into halves and boil, or rather stew, until tender, in broth or water, skimming the surface free of all fat, etc.; add salt, an onion or two stuck with cloves, a bunch of parsley, and a few fine herbs. When tender, take them out, drain, and score them, dip them into dissolved butter; cover with nicely-seasoned bread-crumbs, and when these have dried pour more dissolved butter over, and again cover with the crumbs, and brown with a salamander; thicken the gravy, add a little lemon-juice, and serve with the gravy poured over them, which should be strained. Mutton tongues may be cooked in the same manner, and served on the same dish, arranged alternately. Time, two to three hours to stew.
A two-stage treatment familiar from other tail and tongue cookery: a long gentle braise, then a crumb coating browned under fierce top heat. Nothing here is difficult, but almost everything depends on the tails being genuinely tender before they are crumbed.
- Sourcing the tailsSheep tails are not a supermarket item; a halal or Middle Eastern butcher is the likeliest source, and they may need ordering. Much of the weight is bone and fat, so allow generously per person.
- "Dissolved butter"This means plainly melted butter. Clarified butter behaves better here, as the milk solids in whole butter scorch under a broiler before the crumbs colour.
- The salamanderA salamander was an iron plate heated in the fire and held over the food to brown it from above. A broiler at its highest setting, with the dish about 4 inches below the element, does the same job; a kitchen blowtorch is closer still in spirit.
- Fine herbsIn Victorian usage this often meant simply herbs chopped fine; it can be read as fines herbes — parsley, chervil, chives and tarragon. If tarragon is included, keep it light, as it can dominate a long stew.
- Stewing time is the hingeTwo to three hours is not padding. Tails are collagen-heavy and go from chewy to silky quite suddenly near the end; test by twisting a bone free with finger pressure before you drain and crumb them. Undercooked tails cannot be rescued once coated.
- Skim seriouslySheep tails are a fatty cut. Skim throughout, and if you can, chill the cooking liquid so the fat sets and lifts off in a sheet before you thicken it.
- Two coats of crumbsThe instruction to let the first coat dry before buttering and crumbing again is what gives a crust that holds under the broiler. A few minutes uncovered is usually enough.
- If you add tonguesSheep tongues need the same long simmer, but they must be peeled while still hot — the skin will not come away once cold. Trim the root before slicing and arranging.
- The gravyStrain, then thicken with a beurre manié or a light roux rather than reducing hard; the braising liquid is salty and gelatinous already. The lemon juice goes in off the heat.
Cassell's, like many Victorian household dictionaries, treats the whole carcase as usable, and tails belong to what butchers called the fifth quarter — the offal, extremities and trimmings that were cheap because the joints were dear. Lambs' tails were docked in spring as a routine husbandry job, and in sheep-rearing districts the docked tails went straight to the kitchen; "lamb's tail pie" is recorded in several English county traditions as a seasonal dish tied to that work. The method given here, stewing a gelatinous cut until tender and then crumbing and browning it, is the same treatment nineteenth-century books apply to calf's feet and ox palates: the braise supplies tenderness and the crust supplies the contrast that a plain stewed tail lacks. Serving tails and tongues alternately on one dish reflects a period taste for arranged, symmetrical platters rather than any culinary necessity.