Lamb's Head
Boil the head and liver, but so as not to let the liver be too much done. Take up the head, split it through the bone, which must remain with the meat on. Cut the meat across and across with a knife, grate some nutmeg on it and lay it on a dish before a good fire; then throw over it some grated bread crumbs, some sweet herbs, some allspice, a little lemon peel chopped fine, a very little pepper and salt. Baste it with butter, and dredge a little flour over it.
Just as it is done, take one-half the liver, the lights, the meat, the tongue; chop them small with six or eight spoonfuls water or gravy. First shake some flour over the meat and stew it together; then put in the gravy or water, a good piece of butter rolled in a little flour, pepper and salt, and what runs from the head in the dish. Simmer all together a few minutes, and add half a spoonful of vinegar; pour it on the head. Lay the head on the centre of the mince-meat; have ready the other half of liver, cut in pieces and fried quickly with slices of bacon and lemon; lay these around the dish and serve.--Mrs. T.
DECORATIONS AND GARNISHES FOR COLD MEATS AND SALADS. The day before giving a dinner or evening entertainment, gather up medium and small sized pure white and yellow turnips, carrots, red and pink beets, the different colored radishes. From these the most beautiful flowers can be cut; camellias, roses, dahlias, tulips, tuberoses, etc. No explicit directions can be given except, first, smoothly to pare each vegetable, taking care not to keep them too near the fire, which will cause them to wilt and lose the waxy freshness which makes them so beautiful. Each flower may be laid on a cluster of green leaves or curled parsley, and over the cold meats, and around the edge of the dish.
The cutting of these flowers makes a charming and interesting pastime for the young members of the family, in the evening before.--Mrs. C. G.
A whole-head dish of the sort that assumed a butcher who sold you the animal in pieces you no longer see in a case. The written method is roasting the split boiled head in front of an open fire while a mince is built from the offal; most of the translation work is in the vessels and in sourcing.
- What you need to orderA lamb's head, split, with the tongue in, plus liver and "lights" (lungs). Heads and tongue can be ordered from a halal or Middle Eastern butcher on a few days' notice. Lung is a separate problem: USDA regulations prohibit the sale of livestock lungs for human food in the United States, so the lights are effectively unobtainable here and the mince has to be made from liver, tongue and head meat alone.
- "Before a good fire"This is hearth cooking with radiant heat on one face; the book gives no temperature. A hot oven, in the region of 425F, with the halves on a rack over a pan and turned once, is a workable substitute, with a spell under the broiler for the final browning of the crumbs. The dripping that gathers in the dish is an ingredient later, so do not discard it.
- Boil the head, not the liverThe head wants 1 1/2 to 2 hours at a bare simmer until the meat gives at the jaw. Liver put in the same pot needs 10 to 15 minutes at most and should come out still rosy inside, since half of it is cooked again in the mince and half is fried at the end. Overcooked liver turns granular and will make the mince chalky.
- Scoring and crumbing"Cut the meat across and across" means shallow cross-hatching so the butter and crumb mixture catches. Mix the crumbs, nutmeg, allspice, chopped lemon peel, herbs, pepper and salt together first and press them on after the first basting, or the dry seasonings simply fall into the pan.
- Spoonfuls"Six or eight spoonfuls" of water or gravy is roughly 1/3 to 1/2 cup; the "good piece of butter rolled in flour" is a beurre manié of about 1 tablespoon each. The half-spoonful of vinegar at the end is the seasoning hinge, not an optional flourish: it cuts the fat of the head and the richness of the liver, so add it off the boil and taste.
- Sweet herbsThe phrase conventionally meant a mix of savoury kitchen herbs such as parsley, thyme and marjoram, chopped fine. The book does not define it here. It does not mean anything sweet.
- The garnishFry the reserved liver and the bacon quickly in the same pan, and the lemon slices last, briefly, so they colour without going bitter. Thin slices, cut and used at once.
- YieldThe recipe states no number of servings. One lamb's head with the mince will do for about two people as a main dish, at a stretch three.
- Second item on the pageThe paragraph on cut-vegetable flowers is a garnishing note, not part of this recipe. Root vegetables carved into blossoms will hold their shape overnight if kept in cold water in the refrigerator, which is what "not too near the fire" was guarding against.
Dressing a sheep's or lamb's head with crumbs and herbs and serving it on a bed of minced offal is an old English kitchen set piece; versions run through eighteenth-century printed cookery, and Hannah Glasse's instructions for a lamb's head dressed before the fire are the recognisable ancestor of the method here, down to the crumbs, the lemon peel and the final spoonful of vinegar. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (variously dated 1878 and 1879 in different issues) was assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housekeepers, which is why the page ends with initials rather than a byline, and its inclusion of a head dish reflects a household economy in which an animal was bought or slaughtered whole and nothing was left for the butcher to dispose of. The carved-vegetable flowers that follow belong to the same book's other face: the ornamental late-Victorian dinner table, where a cold-meat platter was expected to be decorated, and where the tedious knife work was handed to the children as an evening amusement.