Skip to main content
Main

Calf's Head Soup

A soup made from a boiled calf's head, meat, brains, wine, herbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice 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

Prepare the head

  1. Place the calf's head in 1½ gallons of water and boil until the meat falls from the bones.

  2. Remove the head and chop the meat finely, then set the chopped meat aside.

Make the mixture

  1. Take out the brains and mix them with 1 pint of claret or port wine, 1 teaspoon of salt, and ⅓ cup of Madeira wine.

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

  3. Work in a little flour.

  4. Add this mixture 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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 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 the meat and gelatin-rich body that gives the soup its substance.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying the herbs and spices through the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the mixture slightly, giving the soup more body.
Claret or port wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the brains and mixture.

The step that matters

Working in the flour. Flour thickens liquid only when it is dispersed evenly; added in a clump it stays lumpy and can be cooked unevenly. Working it in gradually with the butter and meat keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, madeira wine, parsley, clove, allspice, pepper, sage. 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