Important: Safety Warning
This recipe calls for animal brains or related nervous-system tissue. Cattle brain and spinal tissue can transmit bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the cause of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, which is fatal and has no treatment.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Sheep's Head, Baked, with Mashed Potatoes
This is an inexpensive and wholesome dish-Clean the head thoroughly, and let it soak in lukewarm water for a couple of hours to get rid of the blood. Put it into a stewpan with a carrot, a turnip, two onions, and a leek, all cut into dice, and add a bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, and a sprig of marjoram, all tied together, a little pepper and salt, a small lump of sugar, and two ounces of pearl barley. Pour two quarts of water into the pan, and simmer all gently together for a couple of hours. Skim the liquor carefully, and stir the soup occasionally to keep the barley from burning to the bottom of the pan. Take a pint-basinful of well-washed potatoes, and spread them on a dish in a small mound about two inches deep. Take up the head, drain it, place it upon the potatoes, and sprinkle over it two table-spoonfuls of nicely-seasoned bread-crumbs. Lay little pieces of butter or dripping here and there upon it, and bake in a quick oven till both the head and the potatoes are brightly browned. Take the bunch of herbs from the soup, skim the latter carefully, boil it up once more, and serve in a tureen. Time to bake the head, half an hour. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for three or four persons.
This is a two-in-one dish from the economical end of the Victorian repertoire: the head bakes as the joint, its cooking liquor goes to table as barley broth. It cannot be reproduced today, and the reasons are worth spelling out.
- Why this one is off the tableA whole sheep's head includes the brain and the skull cavity, and ovine brain and spinal tissue are classed as specified risk material because of scrapie and the related transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. These agents are not destroyed by two hours of simmering or by any domestic oven. Scrapie itself has never been shown to infect humans, but the controls exist because BSE cannot be ruled out in sheep and goats, and transmissible spongiform encephalopathy in humans is untreatable.
- It is also not obtainableIt is also not obtainable in the form the recipe assumes -- In the UK and EU, the skull including the brain of sheep over about twelve months old must be removed and destroyed at the abattoir rather than sold. Heads from younger lambs may still be sold, but where heads are offered at all they are commonly split and the brain removed. Use a current recipe if you want boiled mutton and barley broth.
- "Well-washed potatoes" is a misprint"Well-washed potatoes" looks like a misprint -- The title says mashed, and the method reads oddly otherwise: a pint-basinful of raw washed potatoes will not spread into a two-inch mound. "Well-mashed" is the likelier reading, though the printed text says washed.
- A pint-basinfulThe pint basin was a common piece of Victorian kitchenware used as a rough measure; an imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so about two and a half US cups of mashed potato — enough for a shallow bed on a dish rather than a substantial side.
- Pearl barleyTwo ounces is roughly a third of a cup, and it is doing the thickening. The warning about stirring so it does not catch on the bottom applies to any long-simmered barley broth.
- What "probable cost, 2s." tells youTwo shillings fed three or four people from a cut most households considered cheap. Heads, trotters and cheeks were the inexpensive protein of the period, and the book gives them serious treatment.
Sheep's head appears in many nineteenth-century British household manuals because it was among the cheapest pieces of meat a butcher sold, and it repaid the cook who was willing to spend time on it: broth from the long simmer, meat from the cheeks and tongue, and the brain treated as a delicacy in its own right. Scotland made the most of it — powsowdie, or sheep's head broth, was a recognised national dish, and singed heads were a common sight in Edinburgh and Glasgow markets well into the twentieth century. Cassell's version is thriftier still in its double duty: one pot yields a browned baked joint and a tureen of soup, so that a single two-shilling purchase covers two courses. The trade in whole heads was sharply curtailed in Britain with the BSE crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, when controls on brain and spinal tissue in cattle were extended to sheep and goats, though heads from young lambs remain legally saleable and lamb head dishes are still eaten.