Mock Turtle of Calf's Head

History

This recipe comes from The Virginia House-Wife, by Mary Randolph, 1824. It is the baked, pastry-lined form of the dish; the same cookbook also carries a separate soup version, "Mock Turtle Soup of Calf's Head." Randolph's baked recipe opens "Have the head nicely cleaned, divide the chop from the skull, take out the brains and tongue, and boil the other parts till tender," and the closing instruction — to reduce the gravy less and serve it in a tureen — shows the two forms were understood as one preparation with two finishes.

Mock turtle is an English dish of the mid-eighteenth century, created as an imitation of green turtle soup. Turtle soup itself became popular after sailors coming from the West Indies landed a couple of them upon British soil in the 1750s. The imitation followed the collapse of that supply: the soup was created in response to overhunting to near extinction of the turtles needed for the original dish, and the animals were very expensive, driving up price even further. Calf's head served as the substitute because such cuts duplicate the texture and flavour of the original's turtle meat — an economical addition with plenty of tastes and textures in itself. Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery gave instruction on "How to dress a mock turtle" from a calf's head by the 1751 edition.

Randolph drew on the knowledge of the enslaved people who worked in her kitchens; the majority of the labour in her kitchen was done by Black women, and the book never explicitly credits those men and women of African descent. Whether that applies to this particular recipe, the record does not say.

Ingredients

• 1 calf's head
• 1 knuckle of veal
• 3 onions
• thyme
• parsley
• 1 teaspoon pounded cloves
• 1 teaspoon mace
• salt
• cayenne pepper
• 2 gill red wine
• 1 gill mushroom catsup
• 1 gill walnut catsup
• butter
• brown flour
• paste
• brains
• grated bread
• 1 egg yolk
• 6 eggs

Instructions

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.
2. 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, and salt and cayenne pepper to your taste.
3. Boil these things together till reduced to a pint, then strain it.
4. Add two gills of red wine, one of mushroom and one of walnut catsup, and thicken it with butter and brown flour.
5. The head must be cut in small pieces and stewed a few minutes in the gravy.
6. Put a paste round the edge of a deep dish, three folds, one on the other, but none on the bottom.
7. Pour in the meat and gravy, and bake it till the paste is done.
8. 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, and fry them a nice brown.
9. Boil six eggs hard, leave one whole and divide the others exactly in two.
10. Have some bits of paste nicely baked.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. The tongue should be salted and put in brine; 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.