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Calfs Head with Mushrooms

A stew of calf's head cooked with mushrooms, brown gravy, salt, cayenne pepper, and hot butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Calfs Head with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Wash the calf's head in two or three waters.

  2. Boil the head for about 1 hour until bones can be removed easily.

  3. Remove the bones, replace the brain, and place the head in a stewpan with the skin side down.

Braise and prepare mushrooms

  1. Cover the head with brown gravy, season with salt and cayenne, and let it simmer for 30 minutes.

  2. Rub the mushrooms with a cloth and a little salt, then cut off the ends of the stalks.

  3. In a separate stewpan, heat a little butter and boil the mushrooms in it.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and gelatinous when boiled and simmered.
Brown gravy
Provides liquid and savoury flavour as the head simmers, keeping the meat moist.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a soft, tender texture when cooked in butter.
Butter
Carries flavour and helps the mushrooms brown and become tender while cooking.

The step that matters

Boiling the head until bones release. The head must be boiled long enough for the bones to come out easily; undercooked connective tissue stays firm and clings to the bone, making the head hard to bone cleanly.

“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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