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Soup

Calf's Head Soup

A hearty soup made from calf's head, bones, tongue, vegetables, spices, stock, thickened with rice flour, served with forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Calf's Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the celery, carrots, turnips, mace, cloves, and peppercorns.

  2. Simmer gently for 6 to 7 hours.

  3. Strain the broth into a clean pan and set aside.

Cook the calf's head

  1. Remove the bone from the calf's head, wash it, roll it up, and bind it with twine.

  2. Place it in a stewpan with the bones and tongue.

  3. Cover with beef stock and simmer for 1.5 hours.

  4. Let it cool in the liquid to prevent drying.

  5. Once cool, strain and skim the fat from the stock.

Make and finish the soup

  1. Heat 5 pints of the stock in a large saucepan.

  2. Cut the calf's head into small thick slices or 1-inch squares and add to the soup, reserving some fat.

  3. Add all the skin and tongue to the soup.

  4. If the skin is not tender, simmer until it is.

  5. Mix the rice flour with cayenne, mace, and enough cold broth or water to make a batter. Stir into the soup and boil for 8 to 10 minutes.

  6. Remove any scum and stir in the sherry.

  7. Serve the soup with fried forcemeat balls and a splash of lemon juice if desired.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Provides gelatin and body, so the soup becomes rich and slightly thick as it cooks.
Rice flour
Thickens the soup into a smooth body when the batter is stirred in and boiled.
Beef stock
Forms the savory liquid base that carries all the other flavors.
Sherry
Adds a fortified wine sweetness and aroma stirred in at the end.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savory, umami flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Let the calf's head cool in its liquid. Cooling slowly in the cooking liquid keeps the meat moist, since abrupt exposure to air dries out the surface and firms the protein.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, turnip, clove, beef, rice, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, turnip, clove, beef, rice, flour. 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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