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Boiling Meat

A boiled calf's head served with parsley butter sauce and optional accompaniments.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Broccoli and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 910 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiling Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Cut off the roots and skin the head.

  2. If cooking the head the next day, soak it in cold water overnight, changing the water in the morning.

Make the sauce

  1. Make the sauce by mixing parsley, butter, and a very small amount of coarse sea salt in a saucepan.

  2. Warm the sauce over low heat, stirring gently to avoid boiling or burning.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the calf's head with the cheek.

  2. Serve the tongue in the center of a small dish, surrounded by the brains.

  3. Accompany with a knuckle of ham, boiled tongue, or pickled pork, and vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, or greens.

  4. Always serve with parsley and butter sauce.

  5. Save the boiling liquid for soup or hash.

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. Broccoli + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together910 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + broccolitop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together653 recipes

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

  4. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the butter sauce.
Butter
Provides fat and a smooth, rich texture to the sauce.
Calf's head
Is the main meat, cooked whole by boiling until tender.

The step that matters

Warm the sauce over low heat. Butter separates and turns greasy or scorched if it boils or burns, so gentle, slow stirring keeps the parsley butter sauce smooth and emulsified.

Swap the broccoli

The recipe marks broccoli as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, butter, ham, potato):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Broccolithe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter, ham, 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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