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Calves' Ears Stuffed

A dish of boiled calf ears stuffed with liver, bacon, ham, bread, herbs, egg, salt, and mace, then fried and served in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Calves' Ears Stuffed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ears

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

  2. Boil the ears until tender, then blanch in cold water.

  3. Cut the gristle next to the head smooth to allow the ears to stand upright.

Stuff and fry

  1. Fill the cavity of the ears with stuffing made from liver, bacon, ham, soaked bread, herbs, egg, salt, and mace.

  2. Rub egg over the ears and stuffing, then fry until light brown.

Serve

  1. Serve in brown or white gravy.

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

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

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

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

  3. Liver + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Liver + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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, holding the stuffing once cooked until tender.
Calf's liver
Adds richness and body to the stuffing.
Bread
Soaked bread gives the stuffing a soft, moist texture that binds it.
Egg
Binds the stuffing and, rubbed on the outside, helps the surface brown when fried.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Cut the gristle next to the head smooth. Smoothing the gristle at the base lets the ears stand upright when served; uneven cuts can make them lean or topple. Boiling until fully tender first matters because the cartilage must soften before the ears are stuffed and fried.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, ham, bread, cream, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, ham, bread, cream, egg. 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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