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Stock Made from Cow-Heel
Excellent stock for soup may be made by boiling a cow-heel and two pounds of shin of beef in water. The meat may be converted into mock potted head-a relishing dish for breakfast or supper. Cleanse a cow-heel, and put it into a stewpan with two pounds of shin of beef, not cut up, and three quarts of water. Add a large carrot, a turnip, an onion stuck with three cloves, six peppercorns, six allspice, a bunch of herbs, a blade of mace, and a slice of lemon-rind. Bring the liquor slowly to the boil, and simmer gently two hours. If the meat is to be made into brawn, take the beef out at this point, and let the heel simmer alone until the stock is sufficiently strong. Carefully remove the scum as it rises, and when the stock is done, pour it into an earthenware pan, and use as required. To make the mock potted head, cut both the beef and the cow-heel into small pieces. Soak half a packet of gelatine in cold stock for twenty minutes; dissolve it in a pint of boiling stock, add the pieces of meat, and pour the whole into an oiled mould to remain until cold. Potted head made in this way may be garnished according to taste. One or two hard-boiled eggs, some slices of beetroot, and a little chopped parsley, if placed tastefully in the jelly at the bottom of the mould, will greatly improve its appearance. Time, five or six hours to boil the cow-heel. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for two quarts of stock and one shape of brawn.
A two-in-one entry: a gelatine-rich beef stock, plus a set meat jelly made from the spent solids. Everything here works in a modern kitchen; only the shopping and a few measurements need translating.
- Cow-heelThe foot of a cow or calf, split, sold by halal and Caribbean butchers as cow foot and by others as calf's foot. It contributes almost no flavour but a great deal of collagen, which is what makes the stock set. Ask the butcher to saw it into two or three pieces; whole, it will not fit most pans.
- Shin of beefBeef shank, bone-in or boneless. Left uncut, as directed, it stays in one piece for slicing or dicing later rather than shredding into the stock.
- The real hingeKeep the water at a bare tremble, never a rolling boil. A boiled stock emulsifies the fat and turns the finished jelly cloudy and greasy, which shows badly in a clear moulded brawn.
- TimesTwo hours before the beef comes out, then the heel alone for another three to four hours, giving the five to six hours quoted. Three quarts will reduce considerably over that span; top up with boiling water if the heel is exposed.
- Half a packet of gelatineGenuinely ambiguous. Victorian packets varied, and a well-made cow-heel stock will often set unaided. Chill a spoonful of the strained stock and see whether it firms; if it does, use no gelatine at all, and if it does not, about 2 teaspoons (7 g) of powdered gelatine per pint is the modern rate for a sliceable jelly.
- SeasoningNo salt is specified anywhere; period stock recipes often leave salting to the point of use. The potted head, eaten cold, needs salt and pepper stirred into the warm stock before moulding or it will taste flat.
- Oiled mouldA neutral oil wiped very thinly round a loaf tin or basin. Turn out by dipping the mould briefly in hot water. Arrange the egg, beetroot and parsley in a shallow layer of stock and let it set before adding the meat, or the garnish drifts.
- StorageChill the mould in the refrigerator, not a cold larder, and treat the finished brawn as you would any cooked meat: keep it cold and eat within three days. The stock keeps four or five days refrigerated, or freezes well; skim the fat cap only when you come to use it.
- Yield and costTwo quarts of stock and one mould; the recipe does not say how many it serves. The 2s 6d is a period price of no current meaning, though the dish was built on cheap cuts.
Cow-heel occupied a particular place in nineteenth-century British cookery as a cheap and reliable source of gelatine, the thing that turned water into stock with body and stock into jelly that would stand up on a plate. Before commercial gelatine was cheap and consistent, calf's foot jelly was both invalid food and a confectioner's staple, and this entry extends the same chemistry to a savoury dish. "Potted head" is the Scots and northern English name for a brawn or head cheese, usually made from a boiled head — a cow's or ox head in Scotland, a pig's in England — set in its own jelly; calling this version "mock" presumably acknowledges that it borrows the form without the head. The instinct behind the whole entry is thrift: five or six hours of fuel to extract everything a cheap joint and a foot will give, with the exhausted meat rescued into a second meal for breakfast or supper, the meals at which cold sliced dishes often appeared.