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Sheep's Tails, Broiled
Blanch, stew, press, and trim the tails as before. When quite cold, brush them over with oil or beaten egg, and dip them in bread-crumbs. Let them lie a few minutes, then egg and bread-crumb them again. Broil them over a clear fire, or fry them until they are brightly browned, dish them in a circle, and serve with ravigote or Valois sauce, or with a sauce made with the stock in which they were stewed, thickened with brown roux, and flavoured with lemon-juice. Sheep's tails and sheep's tongues (an equal quantity of each) may be stewed and broiled together. The tongues will require to be skinned and split in halves. Time, four hours to stew the tails, a few minutes to broil them.
A two-stage dish: a long braise, then a crumbed grill. The recipe assumes you have already read the entry it refers back to, and it assumes a butcher who sells sheep's tails, which is now the harder part.
- "As before"The earlier entry is not reproduced here, but the sequence implied is: blanch the tails, drain, then stew them gently in stock until the meat gives way from the bone; the stated four hours is realistic for tails, which are mostly connective tissue. Then press them flat under a weight and chill until firm; the pressing is what makes them hold shape under the grill.
- Chilled through is not optionalThe hinge of the dish. Warm, un-pressed tails will not take a crumb coat and will fall apart on the bars. They must be cold and firm before you go near them with egg.
- SourcingSheep's tails are a special order from a halal butcher or a whole-lamb supplier; British and American supermarkets do not stock them. Fat-tailed breeds give the meatiest ones. Lamb's tongues, sold frozen in most of the same shops, are the easier substitute if tails defeat you.
- "Broil" here means grillIn this book broiling is cooking over a clear fire — direct radiant heat from below. A modern overhead broiler or a hot grill pan both work; the food is already cooked, so you are only setting and colouring the crust, three or four minutes a side.
- Double breadingCoat with oil or beaten egg and crumbs, rest, then egg and crumb a second time, as the recipe directs. The rest lets the first coat grip, and the second layer is what survives the fat and heat without splitting. Dry, fine white crumbs, not panko-style flakes.
- The saucesRavigote is a sharp herb sauce, either a vinaigrette with shallot, capers and chervil or a velouté finished with herb butter. Valois is generally given in the classic repertoire as another name for sauce Foyot, that is béarnaise with meat glaze added, though the name is sometimes used more loosely for béarnaise. The third option — stewing liquid thickened with brown roux and sharpened with lemon — is the one that needs no shopping.
- Brown rouxEqual weights butter and flour cooked to the colour of a hazelnut shell, about ten minutes over moderate heat. Whisk the hot strained stock into it off the heat to avoid lumps, then simmer to thicken. Reckon roughly 1 oz each of butter and flour to a pint of stock.
- Tongues, if you add themBlanch and stew them with the tails; the skin peels off easily while they are still hot, and stubbornly once cold. Split lengthwise, press with the tails, then crumb the cut faces.
- YieldNot stated. Allow two tails per person as a savoury course, or three with the tongues counted in, dished in the ring the recipe specifies with the sauce in the centre or served apart.
Cassell's belongs to a period when a British cookery dictionary was expected to have an entry for every edible part of the animal, and the tail of a sheep — heavily fatty in some breeds, largely gelatinous in others — was worth the four hours it took to make it tender. The treatment here is straight out of the French repertoire the book leans on throughout: braise a tough cut soft, press it cold so it can be cut and handled, then crumb and grill it to give a crisp surface, the same logic applied to trotters à la Sainte-Menehould and to breast of lamb. The sauce names date the page as much as the ingredient does; ravigote and Valois were standard entries in nineteenth-century professional kitchens and have largely dropped out of home use, Valois surviving mainly as a variant of béarnaise. Sheep's tails never disappeared from cooking — they remain common in Central Asian, Middle Eastern and North African kitchens, where fat-tailed breeds are prized — but they left the British table along with most of the offal cuts, and are now a butcher's special order rather than something a dictionary of cookery would expect its readers to have on hand.