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Hashed Calf’s-head in St. James's Place

A hash made from boiled calf's head, brains, and seasonings, served with butter and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Hashed Calf’s-head in St. James's Place

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Boil the calf's head in water until tender enough for the hair to come off easily.

  2. Remove the head and blanch it in cold water.

  3. Cut the neck into small slices.

Make the hash

  1. In a pan, brown some butter and dust in flour.

  2. Add a small quantity of soup.

  3. Add the calf's head to the pan and stew over low heat, adding ketchup and white wine.

  4. After removing from heat, squeeze in the lemon juice.

Make the brains

  1. Prepare the brains by blanching them.

  2. Place the brains in a small saucepan with wine, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and grated bread.

  3. Beat the brains with the egg yolk.

  4. Fry the beaten brains in beef or mutton fat.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 dish and becomes tender through long boiling and stewing.
Butter
Browns with flour to form a roux that thickens and flavours the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when browned in butter and combined with the soup.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stewed head and sauce.
Brains
Are bound with bread and egg so they set and hold together when fried.
Egg
Binds the beaten brains so they set firmly when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the beaten brains in beef or mutton fat. Brains are delicate and can fall apart or stick if the fat is not hot enough. The egg and grated bread help bind them, but gentle, even heat is needed so they set and brown without breaking.

“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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