Name: Calf's-head Soup
Ingredients: 1 calf's head; 1 onion, stuck with cloves; a small bunch of sweet herbs; 2 blades of mace; coarse sea salt to taste; white pepper to taste; 6 oz. rice flour; 3 tablespoons ketchup; 3 quarts white stock, pot-liquor, or water

Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Calf's-head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Rub the calf's head with coarse sea salt and soak it for 6 hours.
Clean the head thoroughly.
Place the head in a stewpan and cover it with stock, pot-liquor, or water.
Add the onion and sweet herbs.
Skim the surface and boil for 1.5 hours.
Remove the head and skim the liquid.

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.

Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,433 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,695 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Clove + ricetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,982 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,901 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, mace, rice, flour, ketchup):

Nutmegfits better
Allspicefits better
Cinnamonfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, mace, rice, flour, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.