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Calves' Head Soup

A soup made from a calf's head, brains, potatoes, dumplings, meatballs, and herbs, seasoned with salt, pepper, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,609 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Calves' Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Soak the calves' head in water.

  2. Soak the calves' head in salt water to boil.

  3. Remove the brains from the head.

  4. Tie the brains in a bag.

  5. Boil the brains in the bag.

  6. Strain the broth.

Make the soup

  1. Cut all meat and brains into small dice.

  2. Dice the potatoes.

  3. Prepare small dumplings with flour, water, and lard.

  4. Add red pepper, pot herbs, and sweet marjoram to the mixture.

  5. Chop the hard boiled eggs.

  6. Add the chopped eggs to the soup.

  7. Mix chopped meat with salt, pepper, and flour.

  8. Fry the mixture in butter.

  9. Add sherry to taste before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Potato + marjoramtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Flour + marjoramtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Calves' head
Provides the meat and broth base that gives the soup its body.
Potatoes
Add starch and bulk, thickening the soup and making it more filling.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and texture to the soup through their chopped whites and yolks.
Flour
Binds the chopped meat mixture so it holds together when fried.
Lard
Adds fat to the dumplings, giving them a tender, rich texture.

The step that matters

Fry the meat mixture in butter. Frying the floured meat in butter needs enough heat and fat to brown the surface without drying the meat out. Too little heat steams the mixture and makes it grey and tough, while flour helps the outside brown and hold its shape.

Swap the marjoram

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, flour, pepper, egg, meat, butter, sherry):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Marjoramthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, flour, pepper, egg, meat, butter, sherry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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