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Calf's Head Hash

A hash made from calf's head meat, veal stock, spices, Madeira or sherry, and garnished with pickled gherkins and fried sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Calf's Head Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and jelly

  1. Boil the calf's head according to the first direction, then cut all the meat into small square pieces.

  2. Break up the bones and put them with the trimmings into veal stock; stew until reduced and forms a jelly when cool.

  3. Remove the fat from the jelly and place it in a stewpan with Cayenne pepper, salt, mushroom ketchup, and chili vinegar.

  4. Add Madeira or sherry and let it simmer for ten minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Put in the meat, quenelles of forcemeat, egg yolks, and grated lemon rind; stew for ten minutes.

  2. Serve with the sauce on a hot dish, garnished with pickled gherkins and fried sippets.

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

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

  2. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Vinegar + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Provides the meat and gelatin-rich trimmings that give the hash its body.
Veal stock
Reduces to a jelly that binds the meat and gives the sauce richness.
Madeira or sherry
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce during simmering.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and add a creamy, soft texture.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the stock to a jelly. Stewing the bones and trimmings until reduced and set when cool is what gives the hash its body. If it is under-reduced, the sauce stays thin; if over-reduced, it becomes too stiff and salty as it concentrates.

“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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