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Modern Cookery

A hearty soup made with calf's head, vegetables, spices, and rice flour.

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 ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Combine celery, carrots, turnips, mace, cloves, and peppercorns in a large pot and boil gently for 6 to 7 hours.

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

  2. Cover with beef stock and stew for 1.5 hours. Cool in the liquid to prevent drying.

  3. Once cool, strain and skim the fat from the stock. Heat 5 pints of the stock in a large saucepan.

Make and serve the soup

  1. Cut the calf's head into small thick slices or 1-inch squares and add to the soup, along with the skin and tongue.

  2. If the skin is not tender, simmer gently until it is.

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

  4. Remove any scum and add the sherry. 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

Rice flour
Thickens the soup into a body-rich texture when boiled with liquid.
Calf's head
Supplies gelatinous meat and skin that give the soup body and richness.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savory depth and umami to the soup.
Sherry
Adds aromatic sweetness and acidity to finish the soup.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.

The step that matters

Boiling the rice flour batter into the soup. Rice flour must be mixed smooth in cold liquid first and then boiled; added lumpy or dry, it clumps and fails to thicken evenly. Boiling for the full time cooks out the raw starch taste.

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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