Skip to main content
Main

Calf's Chitterlings, Fraise, or Crow

Calf's chitterlings simmered with bacon, onion, bay leaf, then thickened gravy served with vinegar and sliced cucumber.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Calf's Chitterlings, Fraise, or Crow

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and cleanse the chitterlings thoroughly.

  2. Soak them in salt and water overnight.

  3. Boil in water for 15 minutes, then dip in cold water and drain.

Cook and serve

  1. Cut into small pieces and place in a saucepan with stock, bacon, onion, bay leaf, salt, and pepper.

  2. Simmer gently until done, then place on a hot dish.

  3. Reduce the gravy, thicken with flour, add vinegar and sliced cucumber, and serve as a sauce.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's chitterlings
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender through gentle simmering.
Flour
Thickens the reduced gravy into a smooth sauce.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savoury fat and flavour to the cooking liquid.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until done. Vigorous boiling toughens meat proteins and can break the pieces apart, so a gentle simmer keeps the chitterlings tender and intact.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, vinegar, cucumber, butter, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, vinegar, cucumber, butter, parsley. 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