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Calf's-head Soup

A soup made from a boiled calf's head, onions, allspice, and force meat balls, finished with eggs and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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. Cleanse the calf's head thoroughly and boil it in 7 quarts of water until the bones can be removed.

Make the soup

  1. Brown 2 tablespoons of flour in another pot, then strain the broth from the head into it.

  2. Add 2 large onions, a few cloves, powdered allspice, pepper, and coarse sea salt to the pot and bring to a boil.

  3. After about an hour, cut the head into small pieces and add it to the pot.

  4. Pick out the brains, beat them with flour, butter, and chopped parsley to thicken the soup.

  5. Boil for one hour after adding the head, then add the force meat balls and 2 finely chopped hard boiled eggs.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 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.
Flour
Browned and later mixed with brains and butter to thicken the soup.
Brains (in the method)
Beaten with flour and butter to enrich and thicken the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and helps bind the thickened brain mixture into the soup.
Hard boiled eggs
Chopped and added at the end to give body and texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Thickening with brains, flour and butter. Beating the brains with flour and butter before they meet hot broth helps them blend smoothly; added too hot or unmixed, the flour clumps and the soup stays thin or lumpy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, clove, allspice, pepper, butter, parsley, meat):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, clove, allspice, pepper, butter, parsley, meat. 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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