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Calf's Head Hashed

A stew of calf head and feet served with gravy and brain balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Calf's Head Hashed

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Calf's Head Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head and feet

  1. Boil the calf's head and feet until tender, removing the brains first.

  2. Cut the flesh off the head and feet in slices from the bone.

  3. Place the meat and bones in a stew pan with sweet herbs, onions, salt, pepper, butter, and a little water.

  4. Stew slowly until the flavors are well extracted.

Make the gravy and bake

  1. Remove the meat, season with cayenne pepper, and place in a dish.

  2. Strain the gravy, stir in Madeira wine, lemon juice, and grated peel.

  3. Pour some gravy over the meat, add a piece of butter on top, and bake until brown.

Make the brain balls and serve

  1. Clean and wash the brains, parboil them, then make into balls with herbs, bread crumbs, lemon peel, nutmeg, and beaten egg yolk.

  2. Fry the balls in a mixture of lard and butter.

  3. Serve the meat with the tongue on top, garnished with lemon slices.

  4. Warm the remaining gravy, stir in the beaten egg yolk 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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

Calf's head
Forms the main body of the dish, supplying the meat that is sliced and baked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the meat brown during baking and enriching the gravy.
Madeira wine
Adds depth and a sweet, fortified flavour to the strained gravy.
Egg yolk
Binds the brain balls and enriches the gravy when stirred in before serving.
Brains
Form soft, delicate balls that are bound with egg yolk and bread crumbs and fried.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the brain mixture so the balls hold their shape when fried.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk for the gravy. Egg yolk thickens when heated gently but can scramble if the gravy is too hot. Warm the gravy gently and stir the yolk in just before serving.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, flour, madeira wine, lemon, bread, nutmeg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, madeira wine, lemon, bread, nutmeg. 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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