Mock Turtle,—(No. 247.)
Is the “bonne bouche” which “the officers of the mouth” of old England219-* prepare, when they choose to rival “les grands cuisiniers de France” in a “ragoût sans pareil.”
The following receipt is an attempt (and the committee of taste pronounced it a successful one), to imitate the excellent and generally approved mock turtle made by Messrs. Birch, Cornhill.
Endeavour to have the head and the broth ready for the soup,219-† the day before it is to be eaten.
It will take eight hours to prepare it properly.
hours. Cleaning and soaking the head 1 To parboil it to cut up 1 Cooling, nearly 1 Making the broth and finishing the soup 5 8
Get a calf’s head with the skin on (the fresher the better); take out the brains, wash the head several times in cold water, let it soak for about an hour in spring-water, then lay it in a stew-pan, and cover it with cold water, and half a gallon over; as it becomes warm, a great deal of scum will rise, which must be immediately removed; let it boil gently for one hour, take it up, and when almost cold, cut the head into pieces about an inch and a half by an inch and a quarter, and the tongue into mouthfuls, or rather make a side-dish of the tongue and brains, as in No. 10.
When the head is taken out, put in the stock meat,219-‡ about five pounds of knuckle of veal, and as much beef; add to the stock all the trimmings and bones of the head, skim it well,[220] and then cover it close, and let it boil five hours (reserve a couple of quarts of this to make gravy sauces, &c. see No. 307); then strain it off, and let it stand till the next morning; then take off the fat, set a large stew-pan on the fire with half a pound of good fresh butter, twelve ounces of onions sliced, and four ounces of green sage; chop it a little; let these fry one hour; then rub in half a pound of flour, and by degrees add your broth till it is the thickness of cream; season it with a quarter of an ounce of ground allspice and half an ounce of black pepper ground very fine, salt to your taste, and the rind of one lemon peeled very thin; let it simmer very gently for one hour and a half, then strain it through a hair-sieve; do not rub your soup to get it through the sieve, or it will make it grouty; if it does not run through easily, knock your wooden-spoon against the side of your sieve; put it in a clean stew-pan with the head, and season it by adding to each gallon of soup half a pint of wine; this should be Madeira, or, if you wish to darken the colour of your soup, claret, and two table-spoonfuls of lemon-juice, see No. 407*; let it simmer gently till the meat is tender; this may take from half an hour to an hour: take care it is not over-done; stir it frequently to prevent the meat sticking to the bottom of the stew-pan, and when the meat is quite tender the soup is ready.
A head weighing twenty pounds, and ten pounds of stock meat, will make ten quarts of excellent soup, besides the two quarts of stock you have put by for made dishes, &c.
Obs. If there is more meat on the head than you wish to put in the soup, prepare it for a pie, and, with the addition of a calf’s foot boiled tender, it will make an excellent ragoût pie; season it with zest, and a little minced onion, put in half a tea-cupful of stock, cover it with puff paste, and bake it one hour: when the soup comes from table, if there is a deal of meat and no soup, put it into a pie-dish, season it a little, and add some little stock to it; then cover it with paste, bake it one hour, and you have a good mock turtle pie.
This soup was eaten by the committee of taste with unanimous applause, and they pronounced it a very satisfactory substitute220-* for “the far-fetch’d and dear-bought”[221] turtle; which is entirely indebted for its title of “sovereign of savouriness,” to the rich soup with which it is surrounded.
Without its paraphernalia of subtle double relishes, a “starved turtle,” has not more intrinsic sapidity than a “fatted calf.” Friendly reader, it is really neither half so wholesome, nor half so toothsome. See Essence of Turtle, No. 343*, and Obs. to No. 493. To warm this soup, see No. 485.
To season it, to each gallon of soup put two table-spoonfuls of lemon-juice, see No. 407*, same of mushroom catchup (No. 439), and one of essence of anchovy (No. 433), half a pint of wine (this should be Madeira, or, if you wish to darken the colour of your soup, claret), a tea-spoonful of curry powder (No. 455), or a quarter of a drachm of Cayenne, and the peel of a lemon pared as thin as possible; let it simmer five minutes more, take out the lemon-peel, and the soup is ready for the tureen.
While the soup is doing, prepare for each tureen a dozen and a half of mock turtle forcemeat balls (to make these, see No. 375 or No. 376, No. 390 to No. 396); we prefer the stuffing ordered in No. 61, and a dozen egg balls; and put them into the tureen. Brain balls, or cakes, are a very elegant addition, and are made by boiling the brains for ten minutes, then putting them in cold water, and cutting them into pieces about as big as a large nutmeg; take savoury, or lemon-thyme dried and finely-powdered, nutmeg grated, and pepper and salt, and pound them all together; beat up an egg, dip the brains in it, and then roll them in this mixture, and make as much of it as possible stick to them; dip them in the egg again, and then in finely-grated and sifted bread-crumbs; fry them in hot fat, and send them up as a side-dish.
A veal sweetbread, prepared as in No. 89, not too much done or it will break, cut into pieces the same size as you cut the calf’s head, and put in the soup, just to get warm before it goes to table, is a superb “bonne bouche;” and pickled tongue, stewed till very tender, and cut into mouthfuls, is a favourite addition. We order the meat to be cut into mouthfuls, that it may be eaten with a spoon: the knife and fork have no business in a soup-plate.
*** Some of our culinary contemporaries order the haut goût of this (as above directed, sufficiently relishing) soup[222] to be combustibled and bedevilled with a copious addition of anchovies, mushrooms, truffles, morelles, curry-powder, artichoke bottoms, salmon’s head and liver, or the soft part of oysters or lobsters, soles cut in mouthfuls, a bottle of Madeira, a pint of brandy, &c.; and to complete their surfeiting and burn-gullet olio, they put in such a tremendous quantity of Cayenne pepper, that only a fire-proof palate, lined with asbestos, or indurated by Indian diet, can endure it. See note under No. 493.
N.B. In helping this soup, the distributer of it should serve out the meat, forcemeat, and gravy, in equal parts; however trifling or needless this remark may appear, the writer has often suffered from the want of such a hint being given to the soup-server, who has sometimes sent a plate of mere gravy without meat, at others, of meat without gravy, and sometimes scarcely any thing but forcemeat balls.
Obs. This is a delicious soup, within the reach of those who “eat to live;” but if it had been composed expressly for those who only “live to eat,” I do not know how it could have been made more agreeable: as it is, the lover of good eating will “wish his throat a mile long, and every inch of it palate.”
N.B. Cucumber in a side-plate is a laudable vegetable accompaniment.