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Calf's Head Cheese

A preserved meat terrine made from calf head, vegetables, spices, and sausage meat, set in a gelatinous stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Calf's Head Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Wash the calf's head, cleaning the ears and scalding the nose and throat passages.

  2. Place the head in a large soup kettle and cover with cold water.

  3. Add salt to the water.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for about 2 hours.

  5. Remove the eyes from the head.

  6. Skin the tongue and set it aside.

  7. Return the head to the pot, adding carrots, onions, and 2 cloves of garlic.

  8. Boil until the bones slip out easily, about 3.5 hours total.

Separate the meat

  1. Remove the head from the pot.

  2. Discard the bones and hard cartilage.

  3. Return the large bones to the pot for soup.

  4. In a saucepan, combine smaller pieces of meat with 1 quart of the boiling liquid, 2 cloves of garlic, 10 cloves, and 20 allspice.

  5. Boil the mixture rapidly with the cover off.

  6. Chop the meat from the head into large pieces.

Season and set

  1. Mix the chopped meat with bread crumbs, sausage meat, vinegar, salt, cayenne, and black pepper.

  2. Add ground mace, cloves, allspice, and powdered herbs to taste.

  3. Adjust seasoning as needed.

  4. Make the mixture soft, similar to batter, by straining in some of the boiling liquid.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Carrot + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,930 recipes

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

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 bones that give the head cheese its body.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and richness, keeping the chopped meat moist and flavorful when set.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the cooking liquid and help bind the chopped meat into a sliceable mass.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the rich meat.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Make the mixture soft, similar to batter, by straining in some of the boiling liquid.. The hot liquid carries gelatin from the bones and cartilage. Adding enough liquid keeps the mixture moist and lets it set firm as it cools, so the slices hold together.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, vinegar, carrot, onion, garlic, meat, ham):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, vinegar, carrot, onion, garlic, meat, ham. 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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