Home › Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen › Plain Calf's Head Soup
Plain Calf's Head Soup
Mrs. F. D. J. こ Take a calf's head well cleaned, a knuckle of veal, and put them both into a large kettle; put one onion and a large tablespoon of sweet herbs, into a cloth and into the kettle, with the meat over which you have poured about four quarts of water. If you wish the soup for a one o'clock dinner, put the meat over to boil as early as eight o'clock in the morning; let it boil steadily and slowly and season well with salt and pepper. About one hour before serving, take off the soup and pour it through a colander, pick out all the meat carefully, chop very fine and return to the soup, putting it again over the fire. Boil four eggs very hard, chop them fine, and slice one lemon very thin, adding at the very last.
A long, unhurried broth built on gelatine rather than stock cubes: five hours at a bare simmer, then the meat picked, chopped and returned. The finishing egg and lemon go in off the heat.
- Sourcing the headWhole calf's heads are a special order from a halal, kosher or old-style butcher, usually split and with the brains removed. If none is available, two split veal shanks plus a pound of veal cheek give a similar body, though not quite the same silky gelatine.
- "Well cleaned"This assumed the butcher had scalded and scraped the head. Expect to soak it in cold water for several hours, changing the water, and to check the ears and nostrils yourself. Blanching it for ten minutes and discarding that water gives a much clearer soup.
- The herb bundle"Sweet herbs" in this period was a loose mixture rather than a fixed formula, commonly parsley, thyme and marjoram, sometimes savory or a bay leaf, fresh or dried. Tying them in a cloth is the same idea as a bouquet garni; a square of muslin or a large tea infuser does the same job and lets you pull the herbs before they turn bitter.
- Five hours is not an errorEight in the morning to noon is four hours in the pot, with a fifth hour after the chopped meat is returned; that reflects a range that could hold a gentle simmer all day. On gas or induction the same result comes at the barest tremble, lid ajar, over about the same time. A rolling boil will emulsify the fat and cloud the soup.
- Skim, then chillThe recipe never mentions skimming. Lift the grey scum in the first twenty minutes, and if you can, cool the strained broth overnight and lift the fat cap off cold. A calf's head throws a great deal of fat.
- QuantitiesFour quarts of water with a head and a veal knuckle will reduce over the long boil, leaving something on the order of three quarts, enough for eight to ten as a first course. The recipe seasons during the boil; if you prefer, hold back some of the salt, since the reduction concentrates what is already in.
- The last-minute additionsThe recipe says only to add the hard eggs and lemon "at the very last". Simmering the lemon slices makes the pith bitter and the egg turns chalky, so it is worth adding both to the tureen and ladling over them.
- If you want it richerSherry or Madeira appears in many period mock turtle recipes, and a squeeze more lemon at the table does no harm. It will not by itself make mock turtle, which also carried browned stock, spices and forcemeat balls. This version is the unadorned one, as its title says.
Calf's head soup was the everyday relative of mock turtle, the great nineteenth-century imitation of green turtle soup, which relied on the head's gelatinous skin to mimic the texture of turtle fat. Mock turtle carried browned stock, wine, spices and forcemeat balls; what appears here is the plain domestic version, all of the body and none of the expense, and it comes to us from The Home Cook Book — compiled from the contributed recipes of Toronto housewives in the 1870s and sold for charity — where, as with every recipe in the book, the contributor's name is printed rather than a chef's. The eight-in-the-morning start is the honest detail: it assumes a kitchen where a stockpot cost nothing but the space it took. Heads and knuckles were among the cheapest cuts on the block, and a recipe like this measures the distance between a household that could afford to buy soup meat and one that had to make soup out of what was left.