Barbecued Bulls’ Heads.

I have an interesting menu for you today. I found it in The menu maker; suggestions for selecting and arranging menus for hotels and restaurants, with object of changing from day to day to give continuous variety of foods in season .. , published in Chicago in 1910. The menu is not dated, but all of the other menus in the book appear to be contemporary, so we can reasonably assume it comes from the first decade of the twentieth century.

I give the menu as it appears in the book – luckily an English translation was included, although I am not in a position to judge its accuracy. If you can add or improve the interpretation, please do so. I am particularly entranced by the idea of Mexican Nic Nacs.

The barbecue luncheon at the Vaquero Club, Los Angeles.

MENUDO

Carne tatemada— (barbecue beef)

Borrego rellena— (barbecue lamb. Spanish dressing)

Frijole del pais— (beans Spanish)

Carne con chile— (meat with chile)

Cabesa tademada— (bull heads)

Tamales Calientes— (hot tamales)

Fri pas de leche

Sarza de chile verde— (green chile sauce)

Sarza chile Colorado— (red chile)

Ensaladas

Lechugas

Berros

Ensaladas de papas a la moda del pais

Tata huila beve leche con pinole— (Pinole and milk)

Puchitas— (Mexican nic nacs)

Agua apollinaris

(From report of this feast in Hotel Monthly.)

Then came the Spanish-Mexican barbecue: the meat cooked in three pits, one for the beef, another for the mutton and a third for the bulls' heads. The cooking of the tamales, chilis, beans, tortilla bread and other components of the menu was done in the open air in full view of the visitors. Chef Joe Romero is an authority on Spanish and Mexican cookery, and has prepared most of the great feasts of this kind in Southern California during the last twenty-five years.

The bulls' head course was served from the last of the barbecue pits to be uncovered. They are a great delicacy. Said Chef Romero: "At the bull fights, when the bull is killed, his head is cooked and eaten, and is the greatest delicacy known to the Spaniard and Mexican.'"

The bulls' heads in Romero's barbecue pit were cooked so tender that the meat just fell from the bones. Six heads were cooked for this particular barbecue.

I give you, for your amusement, an interpretation of the concept of a “Spanish Salad” according to an Englishman of Italian heritage, chef to the very English Queen Victoria - Charles Elme Francatelli. This Spanish Salad  comes complete with Mayonnaise AND French “vinegaret.”  

Spanish Salad.

Cut two or three ripe tomatas in slices, and dish them up in a circular row in a salad-bowl or dish; fill the centre with either small Windsor beans, French beans, garbancas or Spanish peas, pickled button-onions, large green peas, or haricot beans: all, or any of these, to suit convenience and taste, should be gently mixed with some mayonaise sauce: the salad when finished is to be sauced over with vinegaret,—the ordinary seasoning for French salads.

The Cook's Guide (1867)