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Calf's Head Soup

A soup made from a boiled calf's head, flavored with herbs, spices, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Calf's Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the calf's head in 8 quarts of water until the meat separates from the bones.

  2. Tie summer savory, sage, allspice, cloves, onions, and mace in a bag.

  3. Boil the bagged herbs in the soup.

  4. Strain out the bones.

  5. Let the soup stand overnight.

  6. Skim off all the fat.

Finish the soup

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  2. Add black pepper and a little cayenne shortly before finishing.

  3. Rub butter with flour until smooth.

  4. Boil the butter‑flour mixture for 2 minutes.

  5. Add port wine.

  6. Bring the soup to a boil again.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Summer savory + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together237 recipes

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

  3. Sage + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

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

  4. Summer savory + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together52 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Summer savory + clovetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 gelatinous body of the soup as it cooks down.
Butter
Enriches the soup with fat and smooth richness when combined with flour.
Flour
Thickens the soup by forming a roux with the butter when boiled.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, depth and aroma to the finished soup.
Onions
Contribute savory sweetness and aromatic body to the stock.

The step that matters

Rub butter with flour until smooth, then boil for 2 minutes. Cooking the butter and flour together gelatinizes the starch and cooks out its raw floury taste. Boiling it smooth before adding it to the hot soup prevents lumps and gives even thickening.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (summer savory, sage, allspice, clove, onion, pepper, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against summer savory, sage, allspice, clove, onion, pepper, butter. 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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