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Baked Calf's Head
Clean the head well. Put it in hot water enough to cover, and boil gently until the meat can be easily taken from the bones. Carefully remove all the nice bits of meat and cut or pull it apart into medium-sized pieces. Strain over it the water in which it was boiled. Season with salt and cayenne pepper, parsley, a few drops of onion juice and kitchen bouquet, and, if you like them, add a little clove, mace, and nutmeg. Add a good-sized lump of butter. There should be water enough to nearly cover the meat. Put it in the oven in a covered baking-dish, and bake until the meat is very tender. Take the meat out and arrange it on the platter in which it is to be served, and put it where it will keep hot. To the liquor in the baking-pan add 3 well-beaten eggs and a wineglass of madeira or sherry wine. Have the liquor hot, but not boiling, and after adding the eggs, stir briskly until it thickens.
As soon as it cooks to a creamy consistency pour over the meat, and serve at once.
A two-stage dish: the head is boiled down, the picked meat braised, and the braising liquor finished with egg and fortified wine. The finish is where it stands or falls.
- The hinge: the egg liaisonOnce the eggs go in, the liquor must stay below a simmer — roughly 160-175F — and be stirred constantly. A single boil scrambles it into curds and no amount of whisking brings it back. Tempering the beaten eggs with a ladle of hot liquor first makes this much easier to control.
- Sourcing a calf's headNo supermarket carries one; order it split and cleaned from a halal or Latin butcher, or an old-style meat market, usually with a few days' notice. Heads vary considerably in size, and the amount of picked meat with them; the recipe gives no weight and assumes you take what comes off the bones.
- "Clean the head well"That means scraping and rinsing the ears and nostrils, checking for bristles, and soaking in several changes of cold water until the water runs clear. Ask whether the butcher has already singed and split it.
- First boilGentle simmering to the point where meat leaves the bone takes about 2 to 2.5 hours. Skim the scum in the first fifteen minutes or the strained liquor will be muddy.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no heat at all, only 'put it in the oven' in a covered dish. A moderate oven, in the region of 325-350F, will hold it barely bubbling rather than galloping; bake until the pieces are yielding.
- Kitchen bouquet and onion juiceKitchen Bouquet is still sold — a caramel-and-vegetable browning sauce; a teaspoon is ample. Onion juice was got by grating an onion and pressing the pulp through cloth; a few drops of that, or a teaspoon of grated onion, does the same work.
- WineglassIn American books of this period a wineglass is usually reckoned at about 2 fluid ounces, roughly a quarter cup. Madeira or a dry oloroso sherry both suit; sweet cream sherry does not.
- Yield and serviceThe recipe gives no yield; it depends on how much meat the head gives up. The egg-thickened liquor sets as it cools, so warm the platter and serve at once, as the recipe directs.