Ox-tail in cooking refers to the tail of cattle. An ox-tail can weigh weigh 7 to 8 pounds, is jointed and bony, and each section has some marrow in the center. When sold, it is skinned and cut into short sections. Ox-tail is rich in gelatin and takes a long time to cook; therefore, it’s usually used for soups, braising, or stews. You could also use a pressure cooker if you wanted to save time. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS OX-TAIL Cut…
You may have recently heard of eating “nose to tail,” meaning to eat the whole animal, not just cuts of muscle meat like we usually see at grocery stores. These parts of the animal are usually called “offal,” which includes the intestines, liver, heart, lung, kidneys, brain, etc. In the 1800s, there were many recipes for cooking brain, usually beef brain. But brain from other animals can be used. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS TO PREPARE BRAINPut the brain in…
When I was a child, my mother bought small cans of potted meat and spread it on bread to make sandwiches. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I should buy some to try again, or make my own. In the days before electric refrigeration, if meat couldn’t be eaten right away, it had to preserved somehow. One way of preserving meat was by potting it. Essentially, to pot meat, cook it, cut in small pieces, pound…
Gravy is traditionally a sauce made from meat drippings and combined with some type of thickening agent. It was especially used in French cooking and became popular in the U.S. in the 1800s. Gravies other than those made from meat include cream or white gravy, mushroom gravy, onion gravy, giblet gravy, vegetable gravy, and more. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS MAKING GRAVIESNever toss “that carcass” of fowl, or the ham, or mutton-bone, “with next to nothing upon it,” to the…
Beef tongues used to be a popular dish, but I’ve never seen recipes for them in modern cookbooks. My mother said she ate tongue when she was a child, back in the 1940s, but she never cooked them when I was growing up. I’ve seen tongue for sale in grocery store meat departments, but haven’t had any desire to learn to cook it. Tongues are sold as beef or ox tongues, but they’re both the same. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s…
Homemade stuffing was a great way to use up stale bread and other ingredients and provided a nice dish to accompany poultry. The recipes below will give you some good ideas for stuffings, and you can make changes to suit your taste. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS It is necessary to know the difference between fowls and birds. A fowl always leads its young ones to the meat and a bird carries the meat to its young. So our common…
Ham was an important food as it could be cured and preserved for the winter months. It was heavily salted, so it needed to be soaked many hours before cooking to remove most of the salt taste. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS TO CURE HAMS To make good hams, the pork must be of the best quality. No animal tastes so much of its food as the pig. For one hundred pounds of fine pork, take seven pounds of coarse…
I had never heard of sweetbreads until I began reading old cookbooks. Sweetbreads are what the thymus gland or pancreas of a calf or lamb are called. Offal or organ meats are the parts of the animal that are not muscle. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS TO PREPARE SWEETBREADS The sweetbread belonging to the breast of the calf is far superior to that which is found about the throat, being larger, whiter, more tender, and more delicate. Always buy them…