Skip to main content
Main

Calves' Ears Stuffed

A dish of boiled calf ears stuffed with liver, bacon, ham, bread, herbs, egg, and spices, then fried and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Calves' Ears Stuffed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ears

  1. Scald and clean the calves' ears, cutting them close to the head.

  2. Boil the ears until tender, then blanch in cold water.

  3. Smooth the gristle next to the head so the ears stand upright.

Stuff and fry

  1. Fill the cavity with stuffing made from calf's liver, bacon, ham, soaked bread, herbs, egg, salt, and mace.

  2. Rub egg over the ears and stuffing, then fry until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with brown or white gravy.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Calves' ears
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender after boiling and holding the stuffing.
Calf's liver
Adds richness and a firm, savoury body to the stuffing.
Bread
Soaked to bind the stuffing and keep it moist.
Egg
Binds the stuffing and, brushed on the outside, helps the surface brown when fried.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the stuffing as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil the ears until tender before stuffing. Ears are tough cartilage and gristle that only softens with long, gentle boiling. If they are undercooked, they stay chewy after the final frying, and the stuffing cannot soften them later.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, ham, bread, cream, egg, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, ham, bread, cream, egg, butter. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes