No. 1515

Calf's Head a la Renaissance

Tete de Veau a la Renaissance

Prepare and cook the calf's head exactly as for the plain (No. 1519); when cold cut one pound of it into inch squares and lay them in a saucepan with an espagnole sauce (No. 414) and Madeira. Heat it up slowly adding a quarter of a pound of mushrooms, a quarter of a pound of square pieces of sweetbread, two ounces of cut up truffles, and twenty-four olives. Dress the calf's head in shallow china dishes, each one containing sufficient for one person; lay on a slice of brain Villeroi, and cover with a layer of puff paste (No. 146) and bake in a good oven. This entree may be served in a large dish, the size being in proportion to the number of guests.

← No. 1514 Fillet of Veal Sliced with Pelerine Potatoes Veal No. 1516 Calf's Head a la Poulette →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a composed entrée from Ranhofer's kitchen brigade, and it assumes three other recipes are already done: a whole calf's head boiled and cooled, a pot of espagnole, and a batch of puff paste. Read it as an assembly job rather than a single-session dish.

Start a day aheadThe head must be cooked and completely cold before it can be cut into clean inch squares. Warm head meat is gelatinous and tends to shred. The recipe asks only that it be cooked as for the plain calf's head (No. 1519) and cut once cold.
Sourcing the headWhole calf's head is a special order from a halal, Latin American or old-style butcher; ask for it split and the skull cleaned. Yields vary, but a whole head will give considerably more than the pound this dish needs, leaving enough for a second preparation.
Brains and the lawBovine brain and skull are restricted as specified risk material in the EU and regulated in the US and Canada because of BSE; supply is limited to young animals and varies by jurisdiction. If your butcher cannot supply brain legally, build the dish without the Villeroi slice rather than substituting.
Espagnole in practiceRanhofer's No. 414 is a long-cooked brown sauce built on brown stock and roux. A well-reduced brown veal or beef jus tightened with a little beurre manié gives similar body. The recipe specifies no quantity; use enough to coat the meat and garnish rather than to pool.
Madeira, and when to add itMadeira -- Use a dry Sercial or Verdelho rather than a salted cooking Madeira. The recipe adds it at the outset, with the espagnole, and heats the whole slowly; if you prefer a fresher aroma you can hold some back to finish, but that is a departure from the text.
SweetbreadSoak in cold water two to three hours, blanch, peel the membrane, press under a plate, then cut into squares. Raw sweetbread cut straight from the package will not hold its shape in the sauce.
OlivesThe recipe simply says twenty-four olives; green olives, stoned, are the usual reading for a garnish of this kind. A brief blanch pulls back the brine. Taste the sauce for salt only after they go in.
"A good oven"The book gives no temperature. For a puff paste lid, a hot oven of roughly 425F is a reasonable modern reading. The filling is already hot, so the bake is about the pastry alone: 15 to 20 minutes until risen, dry and deep gold. Chill the cut pastry before it goes on, and do not let it sit on the hot filling waiting for the oven.
YieldAs written, the pound of head plus garnishes fills six to eight individual dishes as an entrée in the old sense — a small course between fish and roast. As a modern main it serves four.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is the record of that kitchen rather than a home cookbook, which is why a single dish cross-references three others by number. Calf's head was a standard of nineteenth-century French cookery in its own right — cheap, gelatinous, endlessly extendable — and the classical repertoire ran through en tortue, à la poulette, en vinaigrette and the rest, each a different dressing for the same boiled head. "À la Renaissance" signals the expensive garnish, since the truffle, sweetbread and puff-paste crust are what turn an offal preparation into something billable at a Fifth Avenue table. The Villeroi treatment named in passing — a slice coated in thick sauce, left to set, then breaded and fried — is generally traced to the eighteenth-century French court and survived into professional kitchens precisely because it lets a soft, fragile item like brain be handled and plated.