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Calf's-head Soup

A soup made from a calf's head, onion, mace, rice flour, ketchup, and stock, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove 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

10 persons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Rub the head with salt, soak it for 6 hours, and clean it thoroughly.

  2. Put the head in the stewpan and cover it with the stock (or pot-liquor or water), adding the onion and sweet herbs.

  3. Skim and boil for 1½ hours.

  4. Take out the head, skim and strain the soup.

  5. Cover the head after removal to prevent discoloration.

Make the soup

  1. Mix the rice flour with the ketchup, thicken the soup with it, and simmer for 5 minutes.

  2. Cut the head into pieces about two inches long, and simmer them in the soup until the meat and fat are quite tender.

  3. Season with white pepper and finely pounded mace, and serve very hot.

  4. Optionally add force-meat balls, lemon juice, sherry or Madeira.

  5. Stew the bones again with fresh vegetables to make stock.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

79Calories
3 gProtein
1 gFat
18 gCarbs

Counts 5 of 6 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Tomato1 medium (123g)22
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

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

  4. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Ketchup + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf head (in the method)
Provides the meat and fat that become tender in the soup and give body to the dish.
Rice flour (in the method)
Thickens the soup as it simmers, giving it a smooth, fuller body.
Ketchup
Adds savoury, tangy flavour that is stirred into the thickened soup.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavour of the head.

The step that matters

Simmer the head until fully tender. Calf head meat and fat need long, gentle simmering to break down the connective tissue. Stopping early leaves the meat tough and greasy, and a hard boil can make the soup cloudy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ketchup, onion, mace, clove. 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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