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Calf's Head Soup

A soup made by boiling a calf's head, then adding chopped meat, brains, wine, spices, and walnut catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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

Prepare the head

  1. Place the calf's head in 1½ gallons of water and boil until the meat falls from the bones.

  2. Remove the head, chop the meat very fine, and set aside.

  3. Take out the brains and mix them with 1 pint of claret, ⅓ cup of madeira, and 1 teaspoon of salt.

Make the soup

  1. Combine the chopped meat with the brain mixture, onion, parsley, allspice, cloves, black pepper, sage, thyme, and walnut catsup.

  2. In a separate pan, work a little browned flour into a piece of butter and add it to the soup just before serving.

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. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  5. Allspice + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 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
Supplies the meat and gelatinous body of the soup, which breaks down and thickens during boiling.
Brains (in the method)
Add richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the chopped meat mixture.
Walnut catsup
Adds a dark, savoury, tangy depth of flavour to the soup.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty colour and flavour when stirred in with butter.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that balances the richness of the meat and brains.

The step that matters

Adding the browned flour and butter. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps; working it into butter first coats the starch granules so they disperse smoothly and thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, allspice, clove, pepper, sage, thyme, walnut):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, allspice, clove, pepper, sage, thyme, walnut. 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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