Skip to main content
Main

Calf's Head Soup

A soup made from calf's head, water, wine, spices, and walnut catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Calf's Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the head

  1. Place the calf's head in ½ gallon of water and boil until the meat falls off the bones.

  2. Remove the head.

  3. Chop the meat very fine. Set aside.

  4. Take out the brains.

Prepare the seasoning

  1. Mix the brains with 1 pint of claret, ⅓ cup of madeira, and 1 teaspoon of salt.

  2. Combine the chopped meat with the onion, parsley, allspice, cloves, black pepper, sage, thyme, and walnut catsup.

  3. Work a little browned flour into a piece of butter.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the mixture to the soup just 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Allspice + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Provides the meat and gelatinous body of the soup as it cooks down in water.
Browned flour
Worked into butter to thicken the soup and add a toasted, nutty depth.
Butter
Carries the browned flour so it blends smoothly into the soup without lumps.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that brightens the rich meat.
Walnut catsup
Adds a dark, tangy, savoury flavour to the seasoned meat.

The step that matters

Work browned flour into butter. Flour must be fully blended into the fat before it meets hot liquid; otherwise it clumps and fails to thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, allspice, clove, pepper, sage, thyme, walnut):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, allspice, clove, pepper, sage, thyme, walnut. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes