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Calf's Tail, with Cabbage

A stew of calf's tails and cabbage simmered with bacon, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Calf's Tail, with Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut each calf's tail in half.

  2. Boil the tails in water for 3 minutes, then drain the tails.

  3. Cut the cabbage in half, trim the stump from the cabbage, then boil the cabbage in salted water for 15 minutes and drain the cabbage.

Cook and serve

  1. Combine the tails, cabbage, bacon, parsley, green onions, cloves, nutmeg, garlic, salt, and pepper in a tureen.

  2. Cover the mixture with equal parts broth and water and boil gently until cooked.

  3. Remove the cloves, nutmeg, and garlic.

  4. Serve the dish.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's tails
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and gelatinous during long gentle simmering.
Cabbage
Provides the bulk of the dish and absorbs flavour from the broth as it cooks.
Lean bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that seasons the broth and the other ingredients.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and sweetens as it simmers in the liquid.

The step that matters

Boil gently until cooked. A rolling boil toughens meat proteins and can break up the cabbage. Gentle simmering lets collagen in the tails slowly convert to gelatin, giving tender meat and a silky broth.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, onion, clove, nutmeg, garlic, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, onion, clove, nutmeg, garlic, pepper. 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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