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Calf's- Head Soup

A soup made by stewing a calf's head with herbs, onion, cloves, mace, pearl barley, and stewed celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper 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 ↓

Calf's- Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Wash the calf's head thoroughly.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt to remove slime.

Make the soup

  1. Place the head in a stew-pan with enough water to cover it.

  2. Add sweet herbs, onion stuck with cloves, mace, and pearl barley.

  3. Cook until the head is tender.

  4. Add stewed celery.

  5. Season with pepper.

Serve

  1. Pour the soup into a dish.

  2. Place the head in the center.

  3. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Barley + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together571 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Forms the main body of the soup and yields tender meat and gelatin as it cooks.
Pearl barley
Thickens the broth and adds a soft, starchy body as it cooks.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Remove the slime with salt. Salt draws out surface slime and impurities from the head before cooking. Skipping this or rinsing poorly leaves a cloudy, off-flavored broth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, barley, pepper, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, barley, pepper, celery. 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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