Ovine abundance

SIR – Cooking a sheep’s head (Letters, November 4) may well be a Norwegian speciality but it was also popular in Birmingham in the early 1950s, when meat was still rationed.

I remember my mother returning from the meat market on a Saturday evening with this delicacy. The brains would be removed and soaked in salt water overnight to remove the blood. They were then poached and served on toast. The rest of the head was cooked to remove the meat, which was used to overfill a basin and covered with a saucer, weighted with a flat iron, producing a pressed meat.

This supplied sandwiches for the following week. Nothing wasted. David Law

Salisbury, Wiltshire

SIR – My father often told of wartime visits to the village butcher for a sheep’s head.

The butcher would be instructed to “leave the eyes in – and it will see us through the week.”

John Newbury

Warminster, Wiltshire