No. 1517

Calf's Head in Tortue

Tete de Veau en Tortue

Prepare and cook the head the same as for No. 1519; reduce some espagnole sauce (No. 414) with Madeira and cayenne pepper; add to it veal quenelles (No. 92), sweetbreads sliced a quarter of an inch thick cut from round pieces an inch and a quarter in diameter, mushrooms, olives, veal palates, balls of gherkins and trussed and glazed crawfish. Drain the head, wipe dry on a napkin, dress and surround it with the garnishing well and symmetrically arranged; pour the sauce over, and set the glazed crawfish around the whole.

← No. 1516 Calf's Head a la Poulette Veal No. 1518 Calf's Head en Tortue, Dressed →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is an assembly recipe from a book that expects you to have four other numbered recipes open at once. Nothing here is difficult, but everything here is a component, and the timing is all in the staging.

The cross-referencesNo. 1519 gives the method for preparing and cooking the head; No. 414 is espagnole, the brown mother sauce built on brown stock and brown roux; No. 92 is a veal forcemeat formed into quenelles and poached. Read all three before you start, since cooking the head is the long part of the job.
The hinge: finish the sauce, don't stew the garnishReduce the espagnole with Madeira and cayenne first, then fold in the cooked garnish only to heat through. Sweetbreads, quenelles and crawfish held in simmering sauce turn to rag; two or three minutes off the boil is enough.
Calf's headA whole scalded calf's head is a special order from a butcher who breaks down veal, and in some markets it is not available at all. Rolled, boned calf's head is sold in parts of Europe; elsewhere a common substitute is a mix of veal cheek and tongue, which gives a similar gelatinous texture without the presentation.
Veal palatesThe hard palate of the roof of the mouth, once sold cheaply, blanched and peeled of its skin, then simmered for hours until translucent. It is effectively unobtainable now. Braised veal tongue cut in neat rounds fills the same slot in the garnish.
SweetbreadsSoak in several changes of cold water until they run pale, blanch, press flat under a weight while cold, then peel the membrane before cutting the inch-and-a-quarter rounds Ranhofer specifies. Unpressed sweetbreads will not slice cleanly at a quarter inch.
Crawfish, trussed and glazedTrussing means bending the tail under and hooking the claws through it so the cooked crawfish sits upright; glazing is a brush of reduced meat glaze or aspic for shine. Ranhofer lists them among the garnish added to the sauce and also sets glazed crawfish around the whole, so hold some back for the platter.
Balls of gherkinsCut from large brine-cured gherkins with a small melon baller. Pat them dry before they go anywhere near the sauce or they will thin it and sharpen it.
No quantities givenRanhofer assumes a brigade eye. A workable reading for a whole head serving eight to ten: about a quart of finished sauce, a scant cup of Madeira reduced into it, and roughly a cup of each garnish element.

A Little History

En tortue means "turtle style," and the name records an absence rather than an ingredient. Green turtle was a great luxury of nineteenth-century banquet cookery, and its classic dressing was a brown Madeira sauce sharpened with cayenne and loaded with quenelles, mushrooms, olives, sweetbreads and crayfish. Calf's head, gelatinous and mild once boiled, was the standing imitation of turtle meat, which is why mock turtle soup is built on it too; serve the head under the same garnish and you have the turtle service at a fraction of the cost. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for some thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a working record of that kitchen, and gives the head three ways in a row here — a la poulette, en tortue, and en tortue dressed.