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Sheeps Head Soup

A hearty soup made with sheep's head, liver, heart, and light, barley, vegetables, and seasonings, finished with eggs and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sheeps Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Cut the liver, lights, and heart into small pieces.

  2. Stew gently in 4 quarts of water with the vegetables and barley; season with pepper, cloves, and salt.

  3. When nearly done, add the prepared sheep's head and boil until tender.

Finish the soup

  1. Remove the head and strain everything from the broth; let it cool and skim off the fat.

  2. Thicken the broth with a little flour and butter, then add browning and ketchup.

  3. Slice the best parts of the head and tongue, and add them along with the hard-boiled eggs and sherry.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Thickens the broth slightly and adds body as it softens during stewing.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smoother, more body-rich liquid when combined with butter.
Butter
Enriches the thickened broth and adds richness to its texture.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Skim the fat after cooling. Fat rises and sets on top of cooled broth, so chilling before skimming lets you remove it cleanly. Skimming while hot leaves greasy, unevenly flavoured soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, barley, turnip, carrot, celery, parsley, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, barley, turnip, carrot, celery, parsley, pepper. 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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