Skip to main content
Main

Olives of Calf's Head

Stuffed slices of calf's head, tongue, and brain served in a sauce of beef stock, butter, flour, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Olives of Calf's Head

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Parboil half a calf's head with the tongue and brain.

  2. Cut even, thin slices from the thickest part of the head and lengthwise slices from the tongue.

  3. Make stuffing with minced ham, savory herbs, pepper, and salt.

  4. Brush slices with beaten egg yolk and spread stuffing evenly over them.

  5. Shape and tie slices securely with twine.

Stew the olives

  1. Place olives closely together in a stew-pan and cover with good stock and slices of fat bacon.

  2. Stew slowly for 1.5 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, thicken strong beef stock with butter and flour kneaded together.

  2. Soak bread crumbs in a little cold milk and add to the sauce.

  3. Scald and finely chop sage and parsley, then add to the sauce along with the chopped brain.

  4. Serve hot.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 olives and provides the meat for slicing and rolling.
Egg yolk
Brushed on the slices to help the stuffing adhere before the olives are shaped.
Flour
Kneaded with butter to thicken the beef stock into the sauce.
Butter
Kneaded with flour to form a roux that gives the sauce body and richness.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk and added to the sauce to help thicken it and add body.
Minced ham
Forms part of the stuffing, adding savory flavor to each olive.

The step that matters

Stew slowly for 1.5 hours. Slow, gentle simmering keeps the tough connective tissue of the head and tongue tender without boiling the meat apart. A hard boil would toughen the meat and break up the rolled slices.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes