Ox-Cheek, Stewed
INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.-- cheek, salt and water, 4 or 5 onions, butter and flour, 6 cloves, 3 turnips, 2 carrots, 1 bay-leaf, 1 OX-TAIL, BROILED. head of celery, 1 bunch of savoury herbs, cayenne, black pepper and salt to taste, 1 oz. of butter, 2 dessertspoonfuls of flour, 2 tablespoonfuls of Chili vinegar, 2 tablespoonfuls of mushroom ketchup, 2 tablespoonfuls of port wine, 2 tablespoonfuls of Harvey's sauce. AVERAGE COST, 38.
Have the cheek boned, and prepare it the day before it is to be eaten, by cleaning and putting it to soak all night in salt and water. The next day, wipe it dry and clean, and put it into a stewpan. Just cover it with water, skim well when it boils, and let it gently simmer till the meat is quite tender. Slice and fry 3 onions in a little butter and flour, and put them into the gravy; add 2 whole onions, each stuck with 3 cloves, 3 turnips quartered, 2 carrots sliced, a bay-leaf, 1 head of celery, a bunch of herbs, and seasoning to taste, of cayenne, black pepper and salt. Let these stew till perfectly tender; then take out the cheek, divide into pieces fit to help at table, skim and strain the gravy, and thicken 1½ pint of it with butter and flour in the above proportions. Add the vinegar, ketchup and port wine; put in the pieces of the cheek, let the whole boil up, and serve quite hot. Send it to table in an entrée dish. If the colour of the gravy should not be very good, add a teaspoonful of the browning.
TIME.-4 hours.
SEASONABLE in winter.
Ox-Tail, Broiled. (An Entrée.) INGREDIENTS for dish for 8 persons.-2 tails, 1½ pint of stock, salt and cayenne to taste, bread-crumbs, 1 egg. AVERAGE COST, 5s. 6d.
Joint and cut up the tails into convenient-sized pieces, and put them into a stewpan, with the stock, cayenne and salt, and, if liked very savoury, a bunch of sweet herbs. Let them simmer gently for about 2 hours; then take them out, drain them, and let them cool. Beat an egg upon a plate; dip in each piece of tail, and, afterwards, sprinkle them well with fine bread-crumbs; broil them over a clear fire until of a brownish colour on both sides, and serve with a good gravy, or any sauce that may be preferred.
TIME.-About 2½ hours.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Note. These may be more easily prepared by putting the tails in a brisk oven, after they have been dipped in egg and bread-crumb; and, when brown, they are done. They must be boiled the same time as for broiling.
OYSTER FORCEMEAT.
The page has been scrambled by the scanner: the ox-cheek ingredient list has the heading "Ox-Tail, Broiled" dropped into the middle of it, and the quantity of cheek itself has been lost ("— cheek" is almost certainly "1 ox-cheek"). Read the ox-cheek method first, then the broiled ox-tail recipe that follows it.
- The hinge: low and slow, then rebuild the sauceThe cheek is rich in collagen and needs a genuine bare simmer, within the book's total time of 4 hours, until a fork slides in with no resistance; a hard boil will leave it stringy. The finished gravy is made separately from strained, skimmed cooking liquor, so do not thicken the pot as you go.
- Buying ox cheekAsk a butcher for beef cheek, boned and trimmed of the tough outer membrane. The recipe assumes one cheek will feed six.
- The overnight soakSalt-and-water soaking is frequently directed for cheap cuts in books of this date, before reliable chilling; the reasoning is not given here. It is not necessary now, though a night in brine (about 4 percent salt) does season the meat well. Rinse and dry it before browning or simmering.
- Harvey's sauce, Chili vinegar, mushroom ketchupAll three were sold ready-bottled, though this book also gives recipes for making chili vinegar and mushroom ketchup at home. Harvey's was a bottled sauce built on anchovy and soy -- Worcestershire sauce is the nearest thing still made. Chili vinegar is a hot vinegar infusion; use a chilli-based vinegar or add cider vinegar plus a little hot sauce. Mushroom ketchup is still sold, and Worcestershire again stands in at a pinch.
- "The browning"Mrs Beeton's browning is a separate recipe: sugar cooked black and let down with water, essentially caramel colouring. A teaspoon of dark treacle or a splash of gravy browning does the same job, and is only cosmetic.
- MeasuresA dessertspoonful is about 2 teaspoons, so the flour comes to roughly 4 teaspoons, thickening 1½ pints (30 fl oz, about 850 ml) of liquor into a light gravy. The 1 oz of butter is 2 tablespoons.
- Ox-tail, broiled: "a brisk oven"For the note at the end, a brisk oven is usually reckoned around 400-425F (200-220C), though the book gives no temperatures. Egg-and-crumbed tail pieces need roughly 15-20 minutes at that heat, turned once, and are easier under a hot grill or in the oven than over coals, where the crumbs scorch before the fat renders.
- Yield and serviceThe cheek gives six portions and the two tails are set down for eight, though jointed tail is a first course rather than eight main plates. The cheek is to be sent to table in an entrée dish -- mashed or boiled potatoes take the gravy well.
Ox cheek and ox tail were classic economy meats of the Victorian kitchen: the cheek dish is costed at 3s. for six, cheap by the standards of this book, and it is marked "seasonable in winter", when a long fireside stew made sense. The elaborate finish -- port, mushroom ketchup, Chili vinegar, Harvey's sauce, and a dash of caramel colouring to correct the gravy's shade -- shows how far cookery of this date leaned on bottled proprietary sauces to give a cheap cut the depth and dark gloss of an expensive one. Both cuts went out of English favour for much of the twentieth century and returned by way of restaurant cooking in recent decades.