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Calf's Head and Tongue with Brain Sauce

A dish of boiled calf head and tongue served with a sauce made from brains, butter, parsley, sage, pepper, salt, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Calf's Head and Tongue with Brain Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head and tongue

  1. Boil the calf's head in water for 2.5 to 3 hours, skimming the surface regularly.

  2. Boil the tongue with the head for 45 minutes before the head is done, then trim and skin it.

Make the brain sauce

  1. Remove the skin and fibers from the brains, drain the water, and place them in a saucepan with water and vinegar.

  2. Boil the brains for 15 minutes, skimming the surface.

  3. Chop the brains coarsely and combine with melted butter, parsley, sage, pepper, salt, and lemon juice in a saucepan.

  4. Simmer the brain mixture gently for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Place the skinned tongue in the center of a hot dish, pour the brain sauce around it, and serve.

  2. Serve the calf's head on a separate dish, garnished with lemon and parsley or boiled broccoli.

  3. Serve parsley sauce in a tureen alongside ham, bacon, or pickled pork.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  3. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brains (in the method)
Chopped and simmered with butter, they form the rich, smooth body of the sauce.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the brain sauce a smooth, silky texture.
Vinegar
Acidity in the poaching liquid helps firm and whiten the brains while cutting richness.
Sage
Adds an aromatic, savoury flavour that balances the richness of the sauce.
Parsley
Contributes a fresh, herbal aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the brain mixture gently. Brains are delicate and turn grainy or curdle when boiled hard, so a gentle simmer keeps the sauce smooth and cohesive.

Swap the broccoli

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, butter, parsley, sage, pepper, lemon, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Broccolithe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, parsley, sage, pepper, lemon, sauce. 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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