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VEAL--CALF'S HEAD PIE (to be served cold)
Scald, soak, and parboil half a calf's head, with two pounds of the knuckle of veal, an onion stuck with two cloves, a bunch of parsley, a strip of thin lemon-rind, half a blade of mace, a little salt and cayenne, and as much stock made from bones as will cover the meat. Let the liquor boil, and simmer it for half an hour. Remove the scum as it rises. Let the head get cold, then cut off the flesh in neat pieces convenient for serving. Skin the tongue, and cut it into small square pieces. Strain the liquor in which the head was simmered, and dissolve a little isinglass or gelatine in it, so that it will jelly strongly when cold. Cut part of the veal into pieces, mince the remainder, and make it into forcemeat with bread-crumbs, shredded beef suet, and seasoning (see VEAL FORCEMEAT). Divide this into balls the size of a nutmeg. Butter a good-sized pie-dish. Line it with thin slices of lean ham, and fill it with layers of the calf's head, the tongue, the veal, the forcemeat balls, and hard-boiled yolks of eggs. Season each layer with salt, pepper, grated lemon-rind, and nutmeg. Cover the meat with strained jelly gravy. Line the edges of the dish with good pastry, cover with the same, ornament the surface as fancy dictates, brush it over with beaten egg, and bake in a well-heated oven. When the pastry is thoroughly baked the pie is done enough. In favourable weather this pie will keep good for ten days or more. Probable cost, 6s. to 8s. Sufficient for a luncheon or supper dish. (See also recipes under CALF'S HEAD.)
A raised luncheon pie of the sort a Victorian household made to sit on the sideboard and be sliced cold over several days. Most of the work is in the first stage; the hinge is the jelly, which must set firmly or the cold pie will not slice.
- Ignore the keeping adviceThe claim that the pie "will keep good for ten days or more" belongs to a cold larder and a different tolerance for risk. Cooked veal, tongue, ham and hard-boiled yolks in jelly should be refrigerated and eaten within three days.
- Calf's head and tongueNot a supermarket item; order from a halal, kosher or old-style butcher a week ahead, and ask for it split and cleaned. If unavailable, the pie works with 3 lb boned veal shoulder plus a pig's or ox tongue, though you lose the gelatinous texture the head contributes.
- "Well-heated oven"The book gives no temperature or time. A reasonable modern reading is a hot start, around 425F, for the first 20 minutes to set and colour the pastry, then dropping to about 350F until the crust is cooked through and the filling hot at the centre; a deep dish may take an hour or more. The filling goes in cold, so the crust will be done before the middle is heated unless the temperature drops.
- IsinglassA gelatine made from fish swim bladders, sold in sheets for clarifying and setting. Use leaf or powdered gelatine instead: for a firm slicing jelly you want roughly double the setting strength of a dessert jelly, about 1 oz powdered gelatine per quart of stock.
- Test the jelly firstBefore it goes near the pie, chill a spoonful of the gelatined stock on a saucer. It should be rubbery and hold a cut edge. Under-set jelly means the pie collapses when sliced and leaks into the pastry.
- Blade of maceA blade is one piece of the dried lacy covering of the nutmeg; half a blade is a small pinch of ground mace, perhaps an eighth of a teaspoon, though equivalents vary. It is removed with the other aromatics when the liquor is strained.
- Forcemeat balls"The size of a nutmeg" means roughly an inch across. Shredded beef suet is sold packaged and shredded in Britain; elsewhere ask a butcher for kidney suet and grate it frozen.
- Yield and servingThe book says only that it is sufficient for a luncheon or supper dish; a large deep pie dish of this should give something like 8 to 10 servings. Cool it completely, ideally overnight, before cutting; served warm the jelly runs and the layers slump.
Calf's head was one of the great thrift showpieces of the nineteenth-century kitchen: cheap, immensely gelatinous, and capable of being turned into mock turtle soup, a boiled dish with brain sauce, or, as here, a cold pie for the sideboard. Cassell's places the recipe in a long alphabetical run under VEAL, though the book also carries separate CALF'S HEAD entries. The cold jellied pie itself belongs to the same broad family as pork pie and veal-and-ham pie, though the handling of the jelly differs: here it goes in before baking, rather than being poured in after the meat has shrunk in the oven. Before commercial gelatine was cheap, cooks reached for isinglass or simply for bones and feet. The stated cost of six to eight shillings was substantial for a supper dish.</p>