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Calf-head Soup

A soup made from a calf's head, onions, herbs, and a brain yolk mixture, served with lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 125 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Calf-head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Soak the calf's head in strong salt-water for 1 hour to draw out the blood.

  2. Carefully remove the brains and boil them separately.

  3. Place the head in a pot with enough water to make soup and add ½ cup of coarse sea salt.

  4. Cook until the head is tender, then cut it into small pieces and return to the pot.

Make the soup

  1. Add the chopped onion, marjoram, basil, summer savory, allspice, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Adjust salt to taste and let it boil for several hours.

Finish and serve

  1. One hour before serving, mash the brains with the yolks of 3 hard-boiled eggs, ketchup, and browned flour.

  2. Thin the mixture with cold water and stir it into the soup.

  3. Make small dumplings or meatballs and add them to the soup.

  4. Serve with a slice of lemon in each bowl.

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. Marjoram + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Marjoram + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Marjoram + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 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
Forms the main body of the soup and gives it rich, gelatinous meat and flavour.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed into the brain mixture to give the dumplings a smooth, rich, binding texture.
Browned flour
Thickens the brain mixture and adds a toasted, nutty colour and flavour.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the brain mixture, rounding out its savoury flavour.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the soup base as it cooks for hours.

The step that matters

Cooking the head until tender before adding the brains. The head must be fully tender before it is cut and returned to the pot, since undercooked connective tissue stays tough. Boiling the brains separately keeps their delicate texture intact and stops them from breaking down in the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (marjoram, basil, summer savory, allspice, pepper, egg, ketchup):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against marjoram, basil, summer savory, allspice, pepper, egg, ketchup. 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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