Skip to main content
Main

Cat's Head Soup

Soup made from a cat's head, onions, spices, anchovies, butter, flour, wine, force-meat balls, egg yolks, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cat's Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Scald and wash the cat's head.

  2. Boil it for 30 minutes.

  3. Skin the head.

  4. Remove the tongue.

  5. Combine the tongue, skin, onions, cloves, mace, nutmeg, sweet herbs, and anchovies in a pot.

  6. Stew until tender.

  7. Remove the meat.

  8. Cut it into 2-inch square pieces.

  9. Skin the tongue before cutting it into squares.

  10. Strain the cooking liquid.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the strained liquid and white wine.

  4. Season well.

  5. Include force-meat balls and yolks of eggs.

  6. Add lemon juice.

  7. Let the mixture stew gently for 1 hour, adding broth if too thick 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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux that thickens the soup and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth, body-giving base.
Yolks of eggs
Enrich and thicken the soup, giving it a smoother, richer texture.
White wine
Adds acidity and depth to the liquid base.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the rich, savoury flavours.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the soup boils after they go in, they can curdle and turn grainy. Keep the mixture stewing gently rather than boiling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, mace, nutmeg, butter, flour, white wine, meat):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, mace, nutmeg, butter, flour, white wine, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes