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Calf's Head Cheese
One calf's head; one teaspoon of salt; 228 one teaspoon of summer savory; one tablespoon of chopped parsley; one teaspoon of chopped onion; one teaspoon of sweet marjoram; one-fourth teaspoon of pepper; one teaspoon of sage. Place the head in enough hot water to cover it, and simmer until the meat will leave the bone. Take out the head very carefully on a skimmer, remove the bones, chop the meat, and add the seasoning. Have ready a small bag made of cheesecloth, pack the mixture into it, tie the bag tightly, and hang it away to cool. When cold, turn the bag wrong side out, off the meat. Cut the cheese into thin slices and serve.
A brawn, or head cheese: nothing is added to set it, so the whole dish depends on the natural gelatin cooked out of the skin and bone. The Butterick text assumes you know how to buy and clean a calf's head, which is where most of the modern work lies.
- Sourcing the headA whole calf's head must be ordered from a butcher or halal/Latin market, usually split, with the eyes and brains removed and the tongue often sold separately. If you cannot get one, an equivalent quantity of trotters, shank and skin-on shoulder gives similar gelatin, though not the same texture.
- Clean it firstThe recipe skips this. Scrub the head, pull out any remaining bristle or clotted blood, and soak it in cold salted water for several hours, changing the water, before it goes into the pot. Skim the simmering liquid persistently or the finished cheese tastes muddy.
- "Simmer until the meat will leave the bone"On a calf's head that is roughly 3 to 4 hours at a bare simmer, never a rolling boil. Hard boiling clouds the broth and emulsifies the fat into it, which stops the cheese setting cleanly.
- Season the liquid, not just the meatOne teaspoon of salt for a whole head is far too little by modern palates, and adding it only to the chopped meat leaves the interior flat. Salt the cooking water as well, then taste the chopped, seasoned meat before packing and correct it while it is still warm.
- Summer savory and sweet marjoramBoth were common pantry herbs in American kitchens of the period and are now uncommon fresh. Dried is fine here; if savory is unavailable, thyme is the closest substitute in this company.
- The cooling step is the hinge"Hang it away to cool" belonged to a cold larder. Cooked meat held at room temperature is exactly where Clostridium perfringens multiplies, so pack the bag while the meat is hot and get it into the refrigerator promptly rather than leaving it out overnight. It needs 8 to 12 hours chilled to set firm.
- Bag or mouldA cheesecloth bag produces the traditional rounded loaf, and squeezing it as you tie expels loose fat and broth. A small loaf pan lined with cling film, weighted with a second pan, is easier to slice and gives the same result.
- Yield and servingA calf's head yields roughly 2 to 3 lb of pressed cheese, enough for a dozen servings as a cold cut. Slice thin with a sharp knife straight from the refrigerator and serve with vinegar, mustard or pickles, as period tables did.
Head cheese contains no cheese and no dairy; the name is usually explained by an older sense of "cheese" meaning something pressed into a firm cake, the sense also invoked for lemon cheese. The dish is the English brawn and the French fromage de tête, and versions of it appear in many European butchering traditions, since a head is bony, awkward and full of collagen, and needs long wet cooking to be worth anything. When the Butterick Publishing Company issued its cook book, alongside its dress patterns, a whole calf's head was still an ordinary and cheap purchase, and a recipe like this was a matter of plain economy rather than nose-to-tail fashion. The related American term souse generally refers to a similar preparation soured with vinegar, and survives in parts of the South and the Caribbean, while head cheese has largely disappeared from northern tables.