Home › The Principles of Cookery › Ox Cheek, Sliced and Fried
Ox Cheek, Sliced and Fried
Cut into neat slices the remains of a cold ox cheek which has been boiled or stewed until quite tender, and dip these into egg and breadcrumbs, grate a little nutmeg over them, and fry them in hot fat till they are lightly browned. Serve on a hot dish, and garnish with slices of lemon. Time to fry, ten minutes. Probable cost of ox cheek, 6d. per pound.
A leftovers dish: it assumes you already have a cold boiled or stewed ox cheek in the larder. Everything depends on that cold meat being properly set before it meets the knife.
- Chill it hard firstOx cheek is dense connective tissue that turns to gelatin as it cooks, so cold cooked cheek sets almost like a terrine. Refrigerate it overnight in a little of its own liquor and press it lightly under a plate; warm or loosely set meat will crumble as you slice. Cut slices about half an inch thick.
- Ox cheek todaySold as beef cheek, more often from a butcher than a supermarket case, and less of a bargain than the 6d. per pound implies. Two cheeks weigh roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb raw and need three to four hours of gentle braising before the stage this recipe starts from.
- Egg and breadcrumbsVictorian breadcrumbs meant dried crumbs from stale bread, finer and drier than panko. The recipe names only egg and crumbs; setting up a third tray of flour first is a modern insurance policy, and helps the egg stick to a gelatinous surface.
- NutmegGrate it over the crumbed slices just before frying, as the recipe directs, not into the crumbs, or it scorches. A few rasps is enough for four slices; nutmeg with beef reads as odd now but was a common seasoning in period made-over meat dishes.
- The ten minutesRead as shallow frying, about half an inch of dripping over moderate heat, four to five minutes a side. The meat is already cooked, so the aim is a crisp crust and a hot centre; hurry it and the outside browns while the middle stays cold.
- FatThe original means beef dripping or lard. Any fat with a smoke point above 350F will do, but dripping gives the flavour the recipe was written around.
- ServingEnough for a light lunch dish for a few people, depending on the size of the cheek. The book calls the lemon a garnish, but the acid also cuts gelatin-rich meat and fried crumbs, so it is worth squeezing over rather than leaving on the rim.
Ox cheek was one of the cheapest things a nineteenth-century butcher sold. Because it is almost entirely worked muscle and collagen, it rewards the long, slow, wet cooking that a kitchen range made easy, and a boiled cheek could plausibly serve a household twice over: hot with its liquor one day, sliced and fried the next. That second-day treatment is the real subject of this entry. Dictionaries of cookery of the period are full of such instructions, since a cook was judged partly on how little went to waste, and egging, crumbing and frying was the standard method of turning any cold cooked meat into something that could be sent to table looking deliberate. Beef cheek has since travelled from poverty cut to restaurant braise, but the reason it works has not changed.