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Calf Ears

A stew of calf ears, seasoned with parsley, carrots, bay leaves, spice, thyme, and white wine, then stuffed, breaded, fried, and served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Calf Ears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut all hairs away from the calf ears.

  2. Stew the ears in a saucepan with slices of veal and bacon, seasoned with parsley, carrots, bay leaves, spice, and thyme.

  3. Moisten with ⅓ cup of white wine and 1 ladleful of broth.

  4. Remove the ears when tender and let them cool.

Stuff and coat

  1. Stuff the ears with forcemeat, shaping them like horns.

  2. Dip each ear in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs, repeating if necessary.

  3. Fry in boiling lard until light brown.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish with tomato sauce or other 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf ears
Provide the main body of the dish; their connective tissue softens into a tender, gelatinous texture when stewed.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs adhere evenly to the ears.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
Lard
Frying fat that conducts heat for browning and a crisp exterior.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling lard until light brown. The lard must be hot enough to set and brown the crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs grease and turns soggy; if fried too long, the crumbs scorch before the interior is heated through.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, parsley, carrot, thyme, egg, bread, potato):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, parsley, carrot, thyme, egg, bread, potato. 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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