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Plain Calf's Head Soup

A hearty soup made from a cleaned calf's head, veal knuckle, herbs, onion, water, and finished with eggs, lemon, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 688 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Plain Calf's Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the broth

  1. Combine the cleaned calf's head and knuckle of veal in a large porcelain vessel.

  2. Place the marjoram, basil, and chopped onion in a clean cloth and add the cloth to the vessel.

  3. Pour in 4 quarts of water.

  4. Bring the mixture to a steady boil, seasoning with salt and pepper.

Strain and finish

  1. After about 4 hours, strain the soup through a colander, picking out the meat.

  2. Chop the meat finely and return it to the soup.

  3. Place the soup back on the heat.

  4. Chop the hard-boiled eggs.

  5. Add the chopped eggs, sliced lemon, and wine to the soup.

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. Marjoram + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

  3. Basil + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,823 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Provides gelatin and meat that give the soup body and a rich texture.
Knuckle of veal
Adds collagen and marrow flavour, enriching the broth as it simmers.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the broth as it cooks.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, mild texture and body to the finished soup.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, marjoram, basil, pepper, egg, lemon, wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, marjoram, basil, pepper, egg, lemon, wine. 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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