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.
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Home › The Principles of Cookery › SHEEP'S HEAD BROTH (a Scottish recipe)
SHEEP'S HEAD BROTH (a Scottish recipe)
Take a large fat young head and a "gang" of trotters, all carefully singed. Wash and scrape them well, and let them soak in cold water for an hour or two. Take out the eyes, split the head into halves, and remove the brains. Shorten the jaw-bones where there is no flesh, and cut out the gristle inside the nose. Prepare the trotters for dressing (see SHEEP'S TROTTERS), wash and brush both head and feet once more, and leave them in water till wanted. Put the two halves of the head together, and tie a string round it to keep the brains and the tongue in their proper places. Lay it in a saucepan with a pound or two of the scrag end of a neck of mutton, a large cupful of barley, and about half a pint of dried peas which have been soaked in cold water. Pour over all a gallon of water, and add a little salt; boil the contents of the stewpan very gently, and carefully remove the scum as it rises. When the head has boiled an hour, put in the trotters, and at the end of two hours, add two carrots, two turnips, and two onions, all sliced together, with a few sticks of celery, if liked. Boil the head three hours or three hours and a half longer, and remember that the more slowly it is boiled the better will be both head and soup. Serve the head with the trotters round it on a dish, and garnish with boiled carrots and turnips. Serve the soup in a tureen. Sometimes the brains are not put inside the head, but are thrown into the broth when it is boiling, simmered for a quarter of an hour, and then served on a separate dish, with brown sauce poured over them. If the sheep's tongues are not wanted immediately, let them cool in the broth. When they are to be served, warm them up in the same, cut them in halves without separating them, and lay them open on a dish. Send piquant sauce to table with them. Time, five to six hours to simmer the sheep's head. Probable cost, sheep's head, from 1s. 2d. to 1s. 6d. Sufficient, one head for two or three persons.