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Another Calfs-head Soup

A hearty soup made with veal, cow-heel, beef gravy, spices, Madeira, leek, herbs, and lemon, served with forcemeat balls and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Another Calfs-head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Fry the veal in butter until light brown.

  2. Add the cow-heel meat, beef gravy, anchovy, butter, cayenne, mace, and cloves to a stew-pan.

  3. Stew slowly for 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the Madeira, leek, parsley, lemon thyme, lemon peel, and lemon juice.

  2. Let it stew gently for 1.5 hours.

  3. Serve with forcemeat balls and hard-boiled egg yolks.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Browned meat that adds savoury depth and body to the soup.
Beef gravy
Forms the liquid base, carrying flavour and giving the soup its body.
Cow-heel meat
Adds gelatin-rich body, giving the soup a silky, rich texture.
Madeira or white wine
Adds acidity and aromatic sweetness that lift the rich gravy.
Butter
Carries fat for browning the veal and rounds out the richness of the soup.

The step that matters

Fry the veal until light brown. Browning the meat creates Maillard flavours that deepen the soup's savoury taste. Pale or overcooked meat gives a flatter, bitter result.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, meat, beef, anchovy, pepper, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, meat, beef, anchovy, pepper, clove. 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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