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Calf's Head Soup

A hearty soup made from a calf's head, liver, feet, heart, and various spices, simmered with onions, herbs, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Calf's Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats

  1. Clean the calf's head thoroughly.

  2. Remove the eyes, teeth, and nose bone.

  3. Clean the liver, lights, feet, and heart.

  4. Place them in an iron pot.

  5. Cover with water and add 2 tablespoons of coarse sea salt.

  6. Boil until the meat separates from the skull bone and the liver is tender.

  7. Transfer the meat to a separate pot.

  8. Cover with water and boil until the meat slips from the bone.

  9. Boil the feet separately as they require more time.

  10. Remove the head with a long skimmer.

  11. Pour out the liquid and strain it through a fine sieve into the pot.

  12. Separate the head from the bone and cut it into pieces.

  13. Divide the feet and liver.

Make the soup

  1. Add the meat to the strained liquid along with the minced onions, marjoram, black pepper, red pepper, salt, mace, nutmeg, cloves, butter, and flour.

  2. Let the mixture simmer slowly until ready to serve.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add the cut-up eggs and small pieces of fresh lemon.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Marjoram + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Marjoram + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 main body of meat and gelatinous body that thickens the soup as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a heavier, more body-rich soup as it simmers.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the soup when cooked into the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the broth.
Fresh lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, meaty broth.

The step that matters

Add the eggs and lemon just before serving. Eggs left simmering too long can overcook and turn grainy, and lemon's acidity can dull with prolonged heat, so adding them at the end keeps the texture and brightness.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, marjoram, pepper, mace, nutmeg, clove, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, marjoram, pepper, mace, nutmeg, clove, butter. 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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