Have ready baked some small shells of puff-paste. Fill them with the mixture, and eat the patties either warm or cold.
Take two pounds of veal cut from the loin, fillet, or the best end of the neck. Remove the bone, fat, and skin, and put them into a sauce-pan with half a pint of water to stew for the gravy. Make a good paste, allowing a pound of butter to two pounds of flour. Divide it into two pieces, roll it out rather thick and cover with one piece the sides and bottom of a deep dish. Put in a layer of veal, seasoned with pepper and salt, then a layer of cold ham sliced thin, then more veal, more ham, and so on till the dish is full; interspersing the meat with yolks of eggs boiled hard. If you can procure some small button mushrooms they will be found an improvement. Pour in, at the last, the gravy you have drawn from the trimmings, and put on the lid of the pie, notching the edge handsomely, and ornamenting the centre with a flower made of paste. Bake the pie at least two hours and a half.
You may make a very plain veal pie simply of veal chops, sliced onions, and potatoes pared and quartered. Season with pepper and salt, and fill up the dish with water.
Wash the head in warm water. Then lay it in clean hot water and let it soak awhile. This will blanch it. Take out the brains and the black part of the eyes. Tie the head in a cloth, and put it into a large fish-kettle, with plenty of cold water, and add some salt to throw up the scum, which must be taken off as it rises. Let the head boil gently about three hours.
Put eight or ten sage leaves, and as much parsley, into a small sauce-pan with a little water, and boil them half an hour. Then chop them fine, and set them ready on a plate. Wash the brains well in two warm waters, and then soak them for an hour in a basin of cold water with a little salt in it. Remove the skin and strings, and then put the brains into a stew-pan with plenty of cold water, and let them boil gently for a quarter of an hour, skimming them well. Take them out, chop them, and mix them with the sage and parsley leaves, two table-spoonfuls of melted butter, and the yolks of four hard-boiled eggs, and pepper and salt to your taste. Then put the mixture into a sauce-pan and set it on coals to warm.
Take up the head when it is sufficiently boiled, score it in diamonds, brush it all over with beaten egg, and strew it with a mixture of grated bread-crumbs, and chopped sage and parsley. Stick a few bits of butter over it, and set it in a Dutch oven to brown. Serve it up with the brains laid round it. Or you may send to table the brains and the tongue in a small separate dish, having first trimmed the tongue and cut off the roots. Have also parsley-sauce in a boat. You may garnish with very thin small slices of broiled ham, curled up.
If you get a calf’s head with the hair on, sprinkle it all over with pounded rosin, and dip it into boiling water. This will make the hairs scrape off easily.