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
Split the head in halves, take out the brains, and soak the head in lukewarm water for an hour. Drain it, put the halves together, and keep them in position by tying string round them. Lay the head in a dripping-tin, put raw potatoes pared and cut into halves round it, lay little pieces of butter here and there upon it, and bake in a moderate oven. Baste frequently, and turn the potatoes about that they may be equally done. When cooked enough, serve the head on a dish, put the potatoes round it, pour the gravy in the pan over all, and serve as hot as possible. The brains and tongue may be served on a separate dish (see SHEEP'S BRAINS AND TONGUE). Time to bake the head, about one hour and a half. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. to 1s. 6d. Sufficient for two or three persons.
This dish cannot be reproduced today. The points below explain what specifically rules it out rather than how to adapt it.
- The brain is the problemThe recipe begins by removing the brains and ends by sending them to the table in a separate dish. Brain and spinal tissue from sheep can carry the transmissible spongiform encephalopathy agent responsible for scrapie, and the same class of agent in cattle causes BSE and, in people, variant CJD. There is no cooking temperature that reliably destroys it.
- The head itself is not a way round itEven with the brain discarded, the skull of a sheep over about twelve months old is classed in the UK and EU as specified risk material, along with the spinal cord and part of the intestine, and must be removed and destroyed rather than sold. Heads from younger animals fall outside those rules, and other countries regulate differently, so availability varies.
- Basting spreads the riskThe instruction to baste frequently and to turn the potatoes in the pan means the drippings from the split skull cavity go over everything on the dish, so the garnish cannot be treated as separate from the head.
- What to do insteadIf the appeal is a slow-baked joint with potatoes cooked in its fat, use a current recipe for shoulder or neck of lamb. Do not attempt a substitution based on the timings here.
- Reading the originalThe recipe says only 'a moderate oven'; no temperature is given, and modern glosses of that phrase vary. The hour-and-a-half bake and 'sufficient for two or three persons' indicate a small, cheap piece of meat, and the cost, 1s. 2d. to 1s. 6d., is quoted in pre-decimal shillings and pence.
Sheep's head was one of the great economies of the Victorian and Edwardian kitchen: heads were sold cheaply, and Cassell's gives them boiled, stewed, made into broth, and here baked whole with potatoes round the tin, so that a household got meat, tongue, brains and gravy from one inexpensive purchase. Scotland kept the best-known version, powsowdie or sheep's-head broth, and singed sheep's heads were a recognisable trade in Edinburgh into the twentieth century. The recipe's splitting of the head and tying it back together lets the interior cook while the head still comes to the table whole. The trade in heads declined in Britain from the late 1980s onwards, as the BSE crisis brought in the specified risk material rules that removed skulls and brains from the food chain.