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This recipe calls for animal brains or related nervous-system tissue. Cattle brain and spinal tissue can transmit bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the cause of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, which is fatal and has no treatment.
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Sharp Sauce
or Sauce Piquante. - This is the same as the sauce known as Shalot sauce, with the sole difference that at the last moment pickled gherkins are added to it. Chop finely (but apart) three tablespoonfuls-one of shalots, one of gherkins, and one of parsley. Put the shalots into a stewpan with an ounce of butter, and according to the sharpness desired, from two to four tablespoonfuls Sheep's Head Broth of vinegar. Stir this over the fire till the vinegar is reduced--and, indeed, till the shalots absorb the whole of it that is left, which will be indicated by the butter becoming clear. Then add an ounce of flour, and a pint of broth, together with pepper, and it may be salt-but this will depend on the saltness of the broth. Let it boil for a quarter of an hour, and let it be skimmed. Lastly, add the parsley and gherkins. Boil it up again, and if need be, skim again.
SHEEP'S HEAD BROTH (the grand Scotch receipt).- A. sheep's head and trotters are singed, and are usually sent for this purpose to a blacksmith's forge. They might be singed with a red-hot iron in the kitchen, but it makes a smell which is apt to steal through the house. After singeing they are soaked in cold water or in several waters for two hours; and afterwards lightly scraped and trimmed so as to remove excess of blackness, though without destroying that burnt flavour which the singeing is meant to produce. The head is then to be split and to be rubbed over with the brains.
Put the head and the trotters on the fire with two gallons of cold water and half a pound of Scotch barley. Add pepper and salt, take off the scum as it rises, and simmer it for at least four hours. When it is about half done throw in a pint of carrots cut into dice. An hour before it is ready put in the same allowance of turnips, together with some chopped onions-in summer-time a few green peas. The soup may be served at once. The sheep's head, by universal consent, is best cold. In every manse throughout Scotland the minister eats sheep's head broth on Saturday while he is preparing his sermon, and cold sheep's head for his Sunday dinner. That is why the sermons of the Kirk are so good. As for the trotters, though they improve the soup, they cannot be eaten cold, and it is best to serve them separately in a Poulette sauce.
Shoulder of Mutton SHEEP'S TROTTERS in the Poulette way. Let them be singed, well washed, blanched, and boned; then simmered in a faggot of pot-herbs for four or five hours-Faggot No. 6-drained and served in the Poulette relish-Relish No. 5.
SHOULDER OF MUTTON is a joint about which there would be less controversy if people knew how to carve it. Always at the butcher's ranked as a second-class joint, many people will have nothing to say to it; while others, again, declare that it is the Cinderella of meat-a beauty misunderstood and fit for princes. In nine cases out of ten, when mine host carves this joint he takes the inferior slices and sends down the best to be enjoyed by his servants. He helps himself from the bend of the joint, where he can cut easiest, and he sends away the bladebone, where the most perfect morsels lie. Many cookery books give elaborate directions how to carve ; but not one points out that the best of the shoulder of mutton is to be found on the upper surface of the bladebone, against the ridge, and that after that the under part of the blade is richest in dainty morsels.
The shoulder of mutton is usually roasted, but being flat and comparatively thin, is easily grilled; and a carbonade of it, or to speak more strictly, of its blade, has for centuries been a celebrated dish. But let no one be deceived by French receipts. Let the reader go back to the word carbonade, and understand what it really means. It is a broil which has been first slashed and scored, as in devilled meats, in order to be penetrated by pepper, salt, and other condiments-but above all by the taste of the fire. This we can understand. In this sense the bladebone of mutton makes an admirable carbonade. But the French cooks have determined, for the glory of the Prince of Soubise, that in their sense a carbonade of mutton shall mean a bladebone planted or larded all over with fat bacon and Shrimp Sauce then stewed or brazed with a goodly faggot of vegetables. Let Mossoo have this if he likes it ; but John Bull, having easy access to the Southdowns, where the wethers grow fragrant on banks of thyme and trefoil, is apt to turn almost an Israelite when he hears of a proposal to dibble his shoulders of mutton with splinters of bacon. The carbonade of mutton is sometimes called the Cavalier's broil; and sometimes also it is parboiled before being scored, peppered, and sent to the grill. Whether roasted or carbonaded, the favourite garniture for shoulder of mutton has long been stewed onions-whole, or sliced, or mashed. For whole onions choose Spanish; for a mash take the Soubise or the Breton receipt.
A vinegar-and-shallot reduction thickened into a small brown sauce, finished off the heat with gherkin and parsley. The whole character of it depends on the reduction stage.
- The hinge: reduce until the butter clearsKeep the shallots and vinegar moving over moderate heat until no liquid pools and the fat looks bright and transparent rather than cloudy. Stop short of this and the sauce tastes raw and thin; the sharpness should be concentrated into the shallots, not floating on top.
- ShalotsRead shallots. The recipe calls for one tablespoonful of chopped shallot (three tablespoonfuls in all: one each of shallot, gherkin and parsley), and it should be cut fine enough to melt into the sauce rather than read as pieces.
- Quantities as givenAn ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons, an ounce of flour a scant 1/4 cup, a pint is 2 cups (a British pint of the period, 20 fl oz, if you want to be exact). An ounce of flour to a pint of broth is a light proportion, giving a thin-bodied sauce rather than one that coats; use more flour if you want it to cling.
- The broth matters more than anything elseWith two cups of stock carrying the sauce, a weak or over-salted commercial broth will decide the result. Use a good brown veal or beef stock, and season with an eye to how salty the broth already is, as the text warns.
- The quarter-hour boil is not paddingFifteen minutes at a bare boil cooks out the pastiness of the flour and lets the scum rise so it can be lifted off. Skim properly; this is what separates a clear piquante from a muddy gravy.
- Gherkins and parsley go in lastBoth are added at the finish and given only a moment's boil. Long cooking turns the gherkins soft and dulls the parsley to a grey-green. Drain the gherkins well or the sauce slackens.
- Adjusting the sharpnessTwo tablespoons of vinegar gives a mild sauce, four a properly piquant one. Use a decent wine vinegar; distilled white vinegar reduces to something harsh.
- Yield and servingAbout two cups, enough for six to eight servings. It is a sauce for grilled or reheated meats, pork and mutton especially, and for anything left from yesterday's roast.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877) was written by the journalist E. S. Dallas and named for Auguste Kettner, whose Soho restaurant was one of the best-known French houses in Victorian London. The book is arranged as a dictionary, which is why this page runs sharp sauce straight into sheep's head broth and a lecture on carving a shoulder of mutton. Sauce piquante belongs to the family of small brown sauces built on a vinegar and shallot reduction, and its usual job in nineteenth-century kitchens was to make cold or reheated meat worth eating again; the acid and the pickle cut through fat and cover the flatness of meat cooked a second time. Dallas's habit of insisting on the English name first, with the French as a parenthesis, is typical of the book's tone: he admired French technique and was often impatient with French pretension, as the aside about Mossoo and his splinters of bacon further down the page makes clear.