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.
Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Calf's Head Cheese
Calf's Head Cheese
This tasty preparation can be produced with any remains of cold, cooked calf's head, as follows: Cut the meat into moderate-sized pieces, place them in a saucepan with some brains or brain sauce, pour in a wineglassful of Madeira or sherry, one or two tablespoonfuls of vinegar, and sufficient calf's head stock to cover; sprinkle in some salt, pepper, and powdered sage, and add a lump or two of sugar. When boiling move the stewpan to the side of the fire, and allow the contents to simmer gently, keeping them thoroughly stirred. When the liquor has reduced to a jelly, place the cheese in a mould, and leave it until cold and stiff. When ready to serve turn it out onto a folded napkin or an ornamental dish paper, on a dish.
A leftovers recipe in the strict Victorian sense: it assumes you already boiled a calf's head for another dish and have meat and stock to spare. The whole thing hinges on reducing the liquid far enough that it sets firm on its own gelatin.
- Sourcing the headWhole calf's heads are a special order from a halal, Latin American, or old-style butcher, usually split and cleaned. If you are starting from nothing, simmering veal shank with two split calf's or pig's trotters gives you both the meat and the gelatin-heavy stock the recipe assumes.
- BrainsCalf brains are still sold in some markets but are tightly regulated in others; bovine brain and spinal cord are classed as specified risk material and banned above an age threshold (thirty months in the US, twelve months for skull and brain in the EU), though a calf falls below both. They can be left out if unavailable, since their role here is richness and body rather than flavour.
- A wineglassfulIn period American cookbooks this is roughly 2 fl oz, a quarter cup, not the six-ounce pour of a modern glass. Two lumps of sugar is about two teaspoons.
- The hinge: reduce until it sets"Reduced to a jelly" is the whole technique. Test it by putting a spoonful of the liquid on a cold plate for a few minutes; if it firms to a wobble, the mould will set. If it stays syrupy, keep reducing, and stir often because a gelatinous reduction scorches easily.
- Simmer, do not boilMoving the pan "to the side of the fire" means dropping to the barest simmer on a low burner. A hard boil emulsifies the fat into the stock and gives a cloudy, greasy set instead of a clean one.
- Chilling and the mouldPack the hot mixture into a loaf tin or terrine, press it lightly so there are no air pockets, and chill in the refrigerator at least six hours or overnight. "Until cold and stiff" at room temperature is a cold-larder instruction and not safe practice for a cooked meat jelly.
- Keeping and servingTreat it as you would any cooked charcuterie: refrigerated, eaten within three or four days. Turn out and slice about a quarter-inch thick; usual accompaniments are sharp mustard, cornichons, or a vinaigrette with plenty of onion.
- Season above the markCold food reads flatter than hot. Taste the reduction when it is at full strength and let it seem slightly too salty and too sharp with vinegar, or the set jelly will taste of nothing.
Head cheese contains no cheese; the word survives from the old sense of a pressed, moulded food, the same logic that gives us lemon cheese and the French fromage de tête. The dish is one of the oldest forms of European charcuterie, close kin to English brawn, and belongs to a kitchen economy in which a calf's head arrived whole and every part of it had a use: the cheeks and tongue for the boiled dish, the brains for a sauce, the bones and skin for the gelatinous stock that sets this preparation. The idiom of the recipe itself — 'stewpan', 'side of the fire', 'wineglassful', 'ornamental dish paper' — reads as British, and the presentation instruction here, turned out onto a folded napkin, suggests professional service rather than home cooking.