Important: Safety Warning
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.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Leek Soup
INGREDIENTS for soup for 10 persons. A sheep's head, 3 quarts of water, 12 leeks cut small, pepper and salt to taste, oatmeal to thicken. AVERAGE COST, 1s . 3d . INGREDIENTS for soup for 10 persons.—A sheep's head, 3 quarts of water, 12 leeks cut small, pepper and salt to taste, oatmeal to thicken. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 3d.
Prepare the head, either by skinning or cleaning the skin very nicely; split it in two; take out the brains and put it into boiling water; add the leeks and seasoning and simmer very gently for 4½ hours. Mix smoothly with cold water, as much oatmeal as will make the soup tolerably thick; pour it into the soup; continue stirring till the whole is blended LEEKS. and well done, and serve.
TIME.-4 hours.
SEASONABLE in winter.
A Scottish sheep's-head broth thickened with oatmeal, priced for feeding ten people on almost nothing. The method is sound; the main obstacles today are sourcing the head and judging the oatmeal.
- The hinge: gentle simmer, no boilA rolling boil emulsifies the considerable fat from a sheep's head and turns the broth cloudy and greasy. Keep it at a bare tremble for the full four hours, skimming the scum in the first half hour.
- The head itselfButchers no longer display split sheep's heads, but halal and Greek or Turkish butchers will usually order one, often already split and cleaned. Beeton's "prepare the head" means scald and scrape or singe off the wool, scrub the skin, wash the nasal and ear passages thoroughly, and soak in cold salted water for several hours to draw the blood.
- BrainsThe instruction to take out the brains is probably practical rather than squeamish: they break down and cloud the broth. In some traditions they were poached separately and served alongside. Note also that for sheep over about twelve months of age the skull, brain and spinal cord are classed as specified risk material in the UK and EU and cannot be sold for food; a head from a licensed butcher will have been prepared accordingly.
- If you cannot get a headTwo pounds of lamb neck on the bone, or a lamb shank plus a split trotter for the gelatine, gives a broth of similar character. The result is leaner and less silky, but the leek-and-oatmeal balance holds.
- QuartsThese are imperial quarts of 40 fl oz, so 3 quarts is about 3.4 litres, not 2.8. Expect to lose a good deal to evaporation over four hours; top up with boiling water if the head is not covered.
- Twelve leeksMarket leeks of the period were probably slimmer than those sold now, so six to eight modern leeks, white and pale green cut small (very roughly 900 g trimmed), should be about the intended proportion. Split and wash them well — leeks carry grit deep between the layers.
- The oatmeal"As much as will make it tolerably thick" is genuinely open, and depends on the grade. Medium oatmeal is the traditional choice; start with 75-100 g slaked in cold water to a loose cream, stir it in, and give it 20 minutes of simmering before deciding whether to add more, since oatmeal keeps swelling.
- Finishing and servingLift the head out, strip the cheek, tongue and jaw meat, chop it and return it to the pot; served whole it is off-putting to most modern tables. Season at the end — four hours of reduction concentrates the salt. Ten modest bowls, or six as a main course with bread.
Sheep's-head broth is a long-established Scottish dish, known there as powsowdie, and the combination of head, leeks and oatmeal is generally taken to be considerably older than Beeton's book; Edinburgh's Duddingston was long famous for singed sheep's heads sold to day-trippers. It belongs to the same leek-and-broth family as cock-a-leekie, with oatmeal rather than barley or prunes doing the thickening. Beeton's listing of an average cost of 1s 3d for ten people is the point of the entry: a head was among the cheapest things a butcher sold, and a household that could not afford joints could still put a substantial, gelatinous, hot dish on the table in winter, when leeks were at their best and little other green vegetable was to be had.