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To Make Potted-head

A jellied dish made from bullock's head and cow-heel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Make Potted-head

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Soak the bullock's head and cow-heel in warm water for 2-3 hours.

  2. Boil them together until tender.

  3. Cut into small pieces and set aside.

  4. Strain the cooking liquid.

  5. Let the liquid cool to skim off the fat.

Make the set

  1. Put the pieces and strained liquid into a saucepan and boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Season with pepper and salt to taste.

  3. Pour the mixture into basins or shapes.

  4. Place the basins in a cool area to set.

  5. Once cold, the mixture will form a jelly and can be turned out onto a dish.

  6. If it doesn't release easily, dip the basin in hot water to loosen.

Serve

  1. Garnish with sprigs of fresh parsley 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.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bullock's head
Provides the meat and collagen that, once cooked, form the body of the dish.
Cow-heel
Adds gelatin-rich connective tissue that helps the cooled liquid set into a firm jelly.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat after cooling. Fat left in the strained liquid sits on the surface and can stop the broth setting cleanly and taste greasy. Cooling lets the fat rise and solidify so it lifts off easily.

“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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