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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Stewed Calf's Head
After boning a calf's head, cut out the tongue and brains, and steep them with the meat in cold water for a few hours. Chop fine one-half pound of lean veal and one pound of beef suet and mix with them one breakfast cupful of grated bread-crumbs, the grated peel of one lemon, two or three tablespoonfuls of powdered herbs, and pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg in suitable quantities. Mix these ingredients well and bind them together with the beaten yolks of four or five eggs. Wash the head, dry it on a cloth, stuff it with some of the forcemeat and bind it round securely with tape. Place the head in a saucepan with a bunch of sweet herbs, two quarts of clear gravy, and one-half pint of white wine. Put the saucepan over the fire until the liquor boils, then move it to the side, cover it tightly, and keep the contents simmering until the head is tender. Boil the tongue in a small quantity of water, and, when cooked, drain and cut into thin slices. Chop the brains with a small quantity of parsley, dredge them with about one tablespoonful of flour, and season with finely-minced lemon-peel, salt, pepper and a small quantity of grated nutmeg; then mix in two well-beaten eggs. Shape the remainder of the forcemeat into small balls, put a large lump of dripping into a fryingpan, make it hot, and fry the foremeat balls in it, also the brain mixture which should be dropped in with a spoon in small quantities. When fried drain the forcemeat balls and brain cakes on a wire sieve in front of a clear fire. When the head is cooked, remove the tapes and place it on a hot dish, strain the cooking liquor through a fine hair sieve, return it to the saucepan with one ounce of butter that has been mixed with two tablespoonfuls of flour, and stir it over the fire until thickened. More salt and pepper may now be added if required. Make the slices of tongue hot in the gravy, then pour it over the calf's head; garnish with slices of lemon the forcemeat balls and brain cakes, and serve while it is very hot. If there is too much liquor to go on the dish with the head, serve the remainder in a sauceboat.
A full Victorian set-piece: one head yields the braised meat, sliced tongue, fried brain cakes and forcemeat balls, all sauced together. Nothing here is difficult, but it is a two-day project and the shopping has to be arranged in advance.
- Sourcing the headA whole calf's head is a special order from a halal, Latin American or old-style full-service butcher, and usually needs several days' notice. Ask for it split and boned, with tongue and brains reserved separately; boning a head at home is an hour's work with a very sharp knife.
- Brains and regulationBovine brain is controlled as specified risk material in connection with BSE. In the UK and EU the skull and brain of cattle over twelve months old may not enter the food chain at all, so only genuine young-calf brains are lawful; US rules restrict brain from animals thirty months and over. Buy from a licensed butcher who can state the animal's age, or leave the brain cakes out and make extra forcemeat balls.
- Clear gravyNot gravy in the modern sense. Oscar means a clear, well-flavoured brown or veal stock, unthickened and unseasoned enough to reduce. Two quarts of good homemade veal stock is the intent; commercial stock will be too salty once it has cooked down under the head.
- Cup and pintA breakfast cupful is roughly one US cup, though period cups ran a little larger, so 1 to 1 1/4 cups of dry crumbs. The half-pint of white wine is 8 fl oz in this American book.
- Powdered herbsProbably a dried savoury mixture of the thyme/marjoram/savory/parsley type, rubbed through a sieve; the recipe does not specify. Two or three tablespoons of dried herb is assertive by modern standards; start with one and taste the forcemeat by frying a teaspoon of it.
- SuetOne pound of beef suet to half a pound of veal is a very rich forcemeat. Fresh kidney suet from a butcher, grated while cold, behaves quite differently from the boxed shredded suet sold with flour coating it; if you use the packet kind, reduce it to about 12 oz.
- Tape and timingKitchen string, or a length of cotton tape, tied at intervals. The stuffed head simmers at a bare shiver — never a rolling boil, which shreds the gelatinous meat — for roughly 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours, until a skewer meets no resistance. The tongue takes about 2 hours separately and should be peeled while hot.
- Draining in front of the fireSubstitute a rack over a tray in an oven at 200F. The point is to keep the fried items crisp and hot while the sauce is finished, not to cook them further.
- Hair sieve and drippingA hair sieve is a fine-mesh strainer; line an ordinary one with muslin. Dripping is rendered beef fat, and any neutral high-smoke-point fat will do for the frying.
- YieldA calf's head with its garnishes serves eight to ten as a main course. The cooking liquor sets to a firm jelly overnight and is worth keeping.
Calf's head was one of the great economy dishes of the nineteenth-century table, and also one of its most ceremonious — it is the foundation of mock turtle soup, which imitated the prized green turtle by exploiting the gelatinous, faintly marine texture of the boiled head. Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maitre d'hotel who gave his name to this 1896 volume, was compiling a reference for both hotel kitchens and ambitious households, and dishes like this one sit alongside the lighter salads and sandwiches the Waldorf is better remembered for. The construction here — a boned head restuffed with a suet forcemeat, tied, braised, then dressed with its own tongue, brains fried in cakes, and forcemeat balls — is straight out of the English tradition of Eliza Acton and Isabella Beeton, and the phrasing suggests Oscar was working from that lineage. The dish faded from American menus over the first half of the twentieth century, as offal fell out of fashion and heads stopped being routinely butchered for retail sale.