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Sheep's-head Soup

A soup made by simmering a cleaned sheep's head with water, onion, herbs, and optional vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sheep's-head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the head

  1. Place the cleaned sheep's head in a stewpan and add enough water to cover it.

  2. Heat the stewpan until the water is warm.

  3. Fill the stewpan with more water until it covers the head.

  4. Cook the head until it is tender.

  5. Remove the head from the pot.

  6. Take the meat off the bones.

  7. Return the bones to the broth.

Season the broth

  1. Add the chopped onion and sweet herbs to the broth.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the head and trotters in an earthen jug with ½ gallon of water and cover the jug.

  2. Bake until the head and trotters are tender.

  3. Cut the meat from the bones.

  4. Add the meat to the soup.

  5. Serve the head and trotters separately.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's head
Provides meat and bones whose collagen softens into gelatin, giving the broth body and richness.
Onion
Softens in the broth and adds savory sweetness and aroma to the soup.
Sweet herbs
Infuse the broth with aromatic flavor as they simmer.

The step that matters

Cook the head until it is tender. Keep the liquid at a gentle simmer. A hard boil toughens the meat and clouds the broth, while slow cooking breaks down collagen into gelatin, making the meat tender and the broth silky.

“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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