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Calves' Ears Stuffed

A dish of boiled calf ears stuffed with liver, bread, egg, and salt, then fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Calves' Ears Stuffed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ears

  1. Scald and clean the calves' ears after cutting them off close to the head.

  2. Boil the ears until tender.

  3. Blanch the ears in cold water.

  4. Cut the gristle next to the head to allow the ears to stand upright.

  5. Optionally, boil the ears in white gravy for added richness.

Stuff and fry

  1. Once cooled, fill the cavity with a stuffing made of calf's liver or cold chicken, soaked bread, an egg, and salt.

  2. Rub an egg over the ears and stuffing.

  3. Fry the ears in oil or butter until golden brown.

  4. Serve with sauce.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Calves' ears
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender through boiling.
Bread soaked in gravy
Adds moisture and bulk to the stuffing, keeping it soft.
Egg
Binds the stuffing and, rubbed on the outside, helps the surface brown when fried.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown. The ears are already cooked, so frying is for color and crisp surface. Egg coating and fat help browning, but too little heat leaves the skin pale and too much can scorch it before the stuffing warms through.

“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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