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Sheep's Head Soup

A soup made from a sheep's head simmered for hours and flavored with ghee, onion, mint, ginger, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mint and ginger work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 647 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sheep's Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Skin the sheep's head.

  2. Cut the head in half, but do not separate the halves completely.

  3. Remove the brains and soak them in a cup of cold water.

  4. Check for maggots where the brains were, remove any found, then wash the head thoroughly.

Make the soup

  1. Place the head in 3 pints of cold water and bring to a boil over high heat.

  2. Simmer the soup for about 4 hours until the meat is tender, then strain the soup.

  3. Heat the ghee in a pot and fry the onions until light brown.

  4. Pour in the strained soup and stir in the powdered pepper, salt, pounded ginger, and mint.

  5. Simmer for a short while and serve hot.

  6. Optionally, clean the brains and slice the boiled tongue to add 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. Mint + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's head
Provides the meat and bones that give the soup its body and rich flavour as it simmers.
Onion
Fried until light brown, it adds sweetness and savoury depth to the finished broth.
Ghee
Fat used to fry the onions, carrying their flavour into the soup.
Green ginger
Adds a sharp, aromatic warmth that cuts through the richness of the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering the head for about 4 hours. Long, gentle simmering breaks down connective tissue so the meat becomes tender and the broth gains body. Boiling too hard can make the broth cloudy and the meat tough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ghee, mint, ginger, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, mint, ginger, pepper. 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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