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Calves' Tails with Cabbage

A stew of calf tails, bacon, cabbage, and parsley simmered in stock with nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Calves' Tails with Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the thick ends of the calves' tails into four pieces, each two inches long.

  2. Parboil the tails with the sliced bacon.

  3. Cut the cabbage into four pieces, blanch for 15 minutes, then drain and press out the water.

  4. Tie the cabbage pieces together.

Cook the stew

  1. In a stock pot, combine the parboiled tails, bacon, cabbage, and parsley.

  2. Moisten with stock and season with nutmeg, pepper, and a little salt.

  3. Let boil slowly until the tails are tender and the stock is reduced.

Serve

  1. Remove everything from the pot, drain, and arrange the tails interspersed with cabbage and bacon on top.

  2. Cover with reduced espagnole sauce and clear gravy.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together660 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Calves' tails
Provide the main meat and gelatinous body that becomes tender during long simmering.
Sliced bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that flavours the stock and the cabbage.
Cabbage
Absorbs the savoury stock and adds soft, mild vegetable body to the stew.
Stock
Provides the liquid that carries flavour and gently cooks the tails and cabbage.

The step that matters

Let boil slowly until the tails are tender and the stock is reduced. Boiling too hard can toughen meat and cloud the stock, while too little time leaves collagen unconverted, so the tails stay chewy. A slow simmer lets collagen soften into gelatin gradually.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nutmeg, pepper, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, pepper, 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.

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