Ox-head Brawn

Ingredients

• an ox-head
• water enough to cover it
• vegetables and flavouring as if for soup
• seasoning it with salt
• spiced pepper
• a table-spoonful of powdered dried thyme
• a tea-spoonful of pepper
• a thick slice of bacon cut into dice
• a well cured tongue

Method

1. 1

   Skin and clean an ox-head, split it in two, cut out the eyes, break the bones of the jaws, remove the brains, and soak in cold water for 1-2 hours.

2. 2

   Put it in a stew-pan with enough water to cover it and boil slowly.

3. 3

   Add vegetables and flavoring.

4. 4

   When tender, strain the meat from the broth, remove bones, and cut the meat while hot, seasoning with salt and spiced pepper.

5. 5

   Press the meat tightly in a round brawn tin and let it cool.

6. 6

   Dip the tin in hot water to loosen the brawn when serving.

As published

This recipe was extracted from Culinary jottings (1885) by A. R. Kenney-Herbert, page 145. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

Ox-head brawn' is not to be despised by dwellers in the plains to whom pork is denied. Skin and clean an ox- head, or purchase one already skinned : split it in two, cut out the eyes, break the bones of the jaws, remove the brains, and let the whole soak for an hour or two in cold water. Then put it into a stew-pan with water enough to cover it. Boil very slowly, and then add vegetables and flavouring as if for soup ; when the meat is quite tender, and you can pick the bones away from it easily, strain the meat from the broth, and vegetables, free it from every fragment of bone, and cut up the meat whilst it is hot and juicy, en masse rather small, seasoning it with salt and " spiced pepper" whilst doing so. If you have no spiced pepper, mix a table-spoonful of powdered dried thyme and marjoram blended, with a tea-spoonful of pep- per, and dust it freely into the meat : when seasoned well, cut up, and mixed, press the meat tightly down in a round brawn tin, and let it get cold. After which it can bo turned out whole, and sliced for breakfast or lunch. The broth in which the meat was stewed should be blended with the soup stock for it will be gelatinous and strong, the proper basis in fact for a good " mock turtle." An excellent " brawn' can be made with an ox-head, a well cured tongue, and a thick slice of bacon cut into dice

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.