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Mock Turtle of Calf's Head

A historical recipe from The Virginia Housewife, by Mary Randolph (1860).

A historical recipe

The Virginia Housewife; Or, Methodical Cook, by Mary Randolph (1860). Project Gutenberg eBook #12519.

From an old book: a historical recipe, not current advice. Its methods, additives and storage may be unsafe by today's standards. Its words name: curing or salting meat. Check current food-safety guidance before following this.

Source and licence

From The Virginia Housewife, by Mary Randolph (1860). Digitised by Project Gutenberg, eBook #12519 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12519). Public domain in the USA; its status may differ elsewhere.

Read the original Public domain in the USA

What was changed: As printed, from the book's text; Project Gutenberg's header and licence removed. Ingredient lines were read out of the text by a program. A historical recipe, not current advice.

United States. Associated with United States by the book is about Virginian cookery (Cooking -- Virginia); the recipe itself names no place (confidence 0.4). "Associated with" means only that the evidence named here links this recipe to that place. A recipe isn't labelled as representing an entire country because a source associates it with one, and regional origins are kept where the source gives them.

  • Curing. Old curing amounts and salts may be unsafe. Use current tested guidance.

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Ingredients

Method

  1. Have the head nicely cleaned, divide the chop from the skull, take out the brains and tongue, and boil the other parts till tender, take them out of the water and put into it a knuckle of veal or four pounds of lean beef, three onions chopped, thyme, parsley, a tea-spoonful of pounded cloves, the same of mace, salt, and cayenne pepper to your taste--boil these things together till reduced to a pint, strain it, and add two gills of red wine, one of mushroom and one of walnut catsup, thicken it with butter and brown flour;
  2. the head must be cut in small pieces and stewed a few minutes in the gravy;
  3. put a paste round the edge of a deep dish, three folds, one on the other, but none on the bottom;
  4. pour in the meat and gravy, and bake it till the paste is done;
  5. pick all strings from the brains, pound them, and add grated bread, pepper and salt, make them in little cakes with the yelk of an egg, fry them a nice brown, boil six egg's hard, leave one whole and divide the others exactly in two, have some bits of paste nicely baked;
  6. when the head is taken from the oven, lay the whole egg in the middle, and dispose the others, with the brain cakes and bits of paste tastily around it.
  7. If it be wanted as soup, do not reduce the gravy so much, and after stewing the head, serve it in a tureen with the brain cakes and forcemeat balls fried, in place of the eggs and paste.
  8. The tongue should be salted and put in brine;
  9. they are very delicate, and four of them boiled and pealed, and served with four small chickens boiled, make a handsome dish, either cold or hot, with parsley and butter poured over them.