7 Bizarre Dishes on Victorian Dinner Tables You’d Probably Hate

Boiled calf head

There were two ways to prepare the calf’s head in Victorian households. The first one: in some cases, especially when they had guests, they bought a calf’s head from the butcher, and the cook was responsible for cleaning it off the hair and preparing it properly.

So, first of all, they had to boil it, and after this process, they had to remove the tongue, cut it into slices and put it in a place along with the eyeballs which were cut in half. Of course, they ate these organs, considering them a delicacy. The cook also prepared a sauce for the calf’s brain to be served with the other organs.

Another way to serve this calf’s head was to simply boil it without separating the organs. This was common in families who did not always have guests. Well, imagine that you have an animal’s head in front of you at the dinner table and you have to cut it and choose which boiled organs to eat from it… What a grotesque scenario!