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Plain Calf's Head Soup

A soup made from calf's head, beef, vegetables, and broth, simmered with tongue and brains.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Plain Calf's Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Fry the beef strips and sliced onion in dripping until brown.

  2. Add grated carrot, sliced turnip, chopped herbs, and pot liquor.

  3. Cook gently for three hours.

  4. Strain the broth.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix browned flour with cold water and add the mixture to the broth.

  2. Simmer for one minute.

  3. Add diced cold tongue and brains and cook gently for three minutes.

  4. Pour out the soup.

  5. Serve.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Browns in the dripping to build savoury flavour and body in the broth.
Browned flour
Thickens the broth as it simmers, giving the soup a richer body.
Dripping
Carries heat for browning the beef and onion and adds richness.
Turnip
Softens during the long simmer, adding mild sweetness and body to the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the browned flour mixture. Flour must be whisked smoothly into cold water before it goes into the hot broth, otherwise it clumps. Simmering briefly then cooks out the raw flour taste and lets the starch thicken the liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, flour. 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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