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Mock-Turtle Soup
1 calf's head; 3 pounds lean veal; 3 pounds beef-shank; 5 quarts water; 1 slice good ham; 1 carrot; 1 turnip; 1 celery root; 2 onions; 1 bunch parsley; a bunch of savory herbs, or 2 teaspoons mixed dry herbs; 1 blade mace; 1 small stick cinnamon; 6 cloves; 6 peppercorns; 2 teaspoons salt; 1 lemon; a wineglass sherry wine.
Select a large, fine head with well-filled cheeks and good tongue. Wash, clean, and scrape the head, and let it soak for half an hour in cold water. Take out the brain and tongue and set aside in cold water, to be used in other dishes.
Cut the head in small pieces and put it in the water with the skin side up to prevent its sticking to the kettle. Heat slowly and skim thoroughly. Let it simmer for two hours, when the meat should slip easily from the bone. Lift out of the kettle and remove the meat carefully from the face and any other nice parts.
Return the bones to the kettle; add the veal, beef, and brain, cut in small pieces; put in the sliced onion and the other vegetables, herbs, and spices, and simmer for three hours. The liquor should then be reduced to about 3 quarts.
While the soup is boiling, cut the meat taken from the face into dice to be returned to the soup. Strain the soup, cool, and remove the fat. Put the liquor into a clean saucepan and add 1 scant cup of the diced meat to each quart of soup; bring to a boil; stir in a brown thickening made by rubbing together 2 tablespoons brown flour and the same of butter. Boil until the flour is sufficiently cooked, stirring frequently.
With the remaining bits of meat make forcemeat balls, using a portion of the brains. Add the sherry wine, a spoonful of Worcestershire sauce, or tomato. Put the force-meat balls into the tureen; have the soup very hot, and pour over. Serve with very thin slices of lemon.
A full day's work in the older style: a long two-stage stock built on a calf's head, then finished with a brown roux, sherry and forcemeat. Nothing in it is difficult, but almost everything in it takes time, and the head has to be ordered in advance.
- Sourcing the headA whole calf's head is a special order from a butcher who breaks down veal, and it is usually sold split and cleaned. If none is available, the same soup can be built from 2-3 lb of veal knuckle plus a split calf's foot for the gelatine, which is what the head is really contributing along with the gelatinous cheek meat.
- The brainsThe instruction to set the brains aside and then add them to the simmering kettle works against itself, since anything in the pot is strained out. Keep them out of the stock: soak in cold water, peel the membrane, and poach 15 minutes in acidulated water, then use them in the forcemeat balls as directed.
- Brown flourThis is plain flour spread on a tray and dried in a low oven, stirring now and then, until it is the color of a hazelnut. It thickens noticeably less than raw flour, so expect a light body rather than a gravy; make it ahead, as it keeps.
- A wineglass of sherryRoughly 2 fluid ounces, about a quarter cup. Use a dry amontillado or oloroso and add it off the heat at the end so the aroma survives.
- Blade of maceA blade is one piece of the dried lacy aril from around a nutmeg, worth seeking out whole. If only ground mace is at hand, a scant quarter teaspoon in a spice bag is the equivalent.
- Celery rootCeleriac, not a celery stalk. One small knob, peeled and roughly cut, is the intended quantity; two large celery ribs will stand in but give a lighter flavor.
- DegreasingThe head throws a great deal of fat. Chilling the strained stock overnight and lifting the solid cap off is far more effective than skimming warm, and the soup is better for the wait.
- YieldAbout 3 quarts of finished soup, which is 10 to 12 servings as a first course. It freezes well before the sherry and forcemeat go in.
Mock turtle soup was invented to imitate green turtle soup, the ruinously expensive civic delicacy of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, served at Lord Mayor's banquets and aldermen's dinners. A calf's head supplies what the turtle supplied: gelatinous, faintly translucent pieces of meat that turn glutinous in long cooking, with the spice, sherry and lemon of the original dressing carried over intact. By the time this book was compiled the imitation had long outlived any pretense and was simply a dish in its own right, standard in American and English soup chapters; Lewis Carroll's weeping Mock Turtle, drawn by Tenniel with a calf's head and hooves, was already a joke his readers understood without explanation. Its place here among the meat soups reflects a kitchen economy that expected a cook to buy a whole head, use the tongue and brains in other dishes, and get several meals from one purchase.