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Ox Cheek, Baked
Wash a large fresh ox cheek in two or three waters, then let it soak for some hours in cold water. Drain it well, and put it into lukewarm water, let it boil, skim the liquid carefully, and simmer the cheek gently for a couple of hours. Take it up, remove the bones, lay the cheek on a flat board, and spread upon it a layer of good veal forcemeat. Roll it firmly, bind securely with tape, and bake in a moderate oven. Place it on a hot dish, remove the tapes, and send tomato, piquant, or good brown sauce, to table with it. Time, one hour and a half to bake the cheek. Probable cost, 6d. per pound. Sufficient for seven or eight persons.
A Victorian braise-and-roll: the cheek is boiled tender, boned, stuffed, tied and finished in the oven. Nothing here is difficult, but the timings and the butchery language need translating.
- Ox cheek is beef cheekOne cheek is a large muscle, commonly around 1.5-2.5 lb trimmed, and it is usually sold today as beef cheek, sometimes already peeled of its silverskin. Buy two smaller cheeks if a single large one is unavailable; they roll together well enough.
- The tough membraneOld cheeks came with a heavy sheet of connective tissue on the outside. If your butcher has not removed it, pare it off after the initial simmer, when it lifts easily. Left on, it shrinks in the oven and buckles the roll.
- Two hours is not enoughCheek is nearly all collagen and needs 3 to 4 hours at a bare simmer before it will slice without resistance. The recipe's two hours plus ninety minutes in the oven gets there in total, but the meat is easier to bone and roll if you give it the longer simmer first.
- A moderate ovenTaken today as roughly 325-350F / 160-175C. Cover the roll loosely with foil for the first hour so the outside does not dry while the forcemeat comes up to temperature.
- Veal forcemeatVictorian versions are generally minced veal or suet bound with breadcrumbs, egg, lemon zest, parsley, thyme and mace. Any fine-textured meat stuffing works; keep it to roughly 12 oz for a large cheek, or the roll will not close.
- TapeCotton kitchen tape or butcher's twine, tied at intervals of about an inch and a half. Chill the rolled cheek for an hour before baking and it will hold its shape far better.
- Check the centreThe forcemeat goes in raw and sits at the coolest point of the roll. Take it to 165F / 74C at the core, which the stated ninety minutes should comfortably achieve.
- The cooking liquorDo not throw it away. Skimmed and reduced, it makes the brown sauce the recipe calls for.
- YieldSeven or eight portions is optimistic for a single modern cheek; count on four to six, sliced across the roll.
Cheek was offal-adjacent butchery, sold at 6d. per pound, which placed it among the economical dishes recommended to households of modest means. The technique of boning a cheap, gelatinous cut, spreading it with forcemeat, rolling and tying it is the same one applied to breast of veal, ox tongue and boned poultry throughout the nineteenth century: the stuffing stretches the meat, the roll gives it the appearance of a joint, and the tape holds the illusion together on the dish. That the finished thing is served with tomato, piquant or brown sauce, rather than plain gravy, tells you it was expected to want help. Cheek fell out of favour in Britain for much of the twentieth century and returned only with the revival of slow-cooked cuts in restaurant kitchens, where the same collagen that made it cheap now makes it desirable.