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.
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Hashed Calf's Head
449. Half boil a calf's head in two quarts of water, very gently lay a cloth over it to keep it a good colour, turn it over when half done. When cold cut it in slices with the tongue, make a good stock of veal with a little lemon thyme, winter savory, a little parsley, pepper, salt, and mace; thicken it with a little butter and flour, half a teacupful of white wine, and a little nutmeg. It is very good if basted in its own liquor, wholly or in part, instead of gravy. Skin the brains and beat them up (without boiling) with an egg, a little flour, salt, and nutmeg. Fry them in cakes with forced-meat and egg balls, and rolled bacon, garnish with slices of lemon. 450. CALF'S HEAD HASHED WHITE. - Let the head be well washed, and then boil it in soft water. Take the meat from the bones and cut it into thin collops, then take of the water it was boiled in enough to stew it till the meat is thoroughly hot. Work two ounces of butter well with some flour, and mix with it a little essence of anchovies, three blades of mace, a little nutmeg, with pepper and salt. Put this to the collops, and mix it well together. Take the yolk of an egg well beaten, stir it up with half a pint of milk, or omit the egg and milk, and use half a pint of cream, add it to the hash. When done, squeeze in the juice of a lemon, and garnish with balls of forcemeat and egg balls. 451. TO HASH CALF'S HEAD BROWN. - From a head half boiled cut off the meat in slices, half an inch thick, and two or three inches long. Brown some butter, flour, and sliced onions, and throw in the slices with some good gravy, truffles, and morels; give it one boil, skim it well, and set it in a moderate heat to simmer till very tender. Season with pepper, salt, and cayenne, at first; and ten minutes before serving throw in some shred parsley, and a very small bit of tarragon and knotted marjoram, cut as fine as possible. Just before serving add the squeeze of a lemon, and a table-spoonful of ketchup, and if liked a glass of white wine with brain cakes. Forcemeat balls and bits of bacon rolled round.
Three linked versions of the same dish, all built on a boiled calf's head, and two of them finished with cakes of raw beaten brain. The nervous-system tissue is the reason this cannot be cooked today, but several other elements have also passed out of ordinary supply.
- Why the brains rule this outBovine brain and spinal cord are the tissues that carry the BSE agent, and no domestic cooking step destroys it. Recipe 449 compounds the problem by beating the brains raw into egg and flour and frying them briefly in cakes, and 451 adds the same brain cakes at the end; there is no temperature or time that makes this safe.
- The head itselfCattle skull, including brain and eye tissue, is classed as specified risk material in the UK and EU, though that rule bites on animals over twelve months rather than young calves. In practice the British trade no longer sells the head split for the table as it did in the nineteenth century, even if tete de veau survives elsewhere in Europe. The brain-free white hash at 450 still depends on a cut that is hard to obtain from ordinary retail butchery here.
- Half-boiled meat449 and 451 both start from a head only half cooked, cooled and sliced before being reheated in gravy; 450 boils the head through before hashing. Large cuts held warm and reheated are outside modern practice for offal; if you want a braised veal dish, work from a current recipe.
- Vessels and measuresThe book does not define its measures; a teacupful is conventionally taken as about a gill, 4 to 5 fl oz, and a wineglassful at roughly half that. "Soft water" means water low in dissolved minerals, thought to give whiter boiled meat, and "collops" are thin slices.
- Vanished flavouringsEssence of anchovies was a thin bottled extract rather than a paste. Winter savory and knotted marjoram (sweet marjoram) are still grown but rarely stocked; the ketchup called for in 451 is most likely mushroom or walnut, the usual sorts at this date, rather than tomato.
- Forcemeat and egg ballsEgg balls were hard yolks pounded with raw yolk and flour, rolled small and poached or fried, used purely as garnish. They are the period equivalent of a scatter of croutons and carry none of the risk of the brain cakes.
- "A moderate heat"In 451 this indicates a gentle, steady simmer rather than any oven setting; the recipe says to skim it and let it simmer till very tender. The thickening comes from the browned butter and flour, not from hard boiling.