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To Hash a Calf's Head Brown

A hash made from boiled calf's head, seasoned with brown gravy, walnut pickle, ketchup, red wine, mace, capers, and finished with egg yolk and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Hash a Calf's Head Brown

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Boil the calf's head until cooked.

  2. Let the calf's head cool.

  3. Cut half of the head into thin slices.

  4. Remove the bone-ends from the other half of the head.

  5. Score the meat of the other half.

Make the hash

  1. Place the sliced half in a stew-pan.

  2. Add brown gravy, walnut pickle, ketchup, red wine, mace, and chopped capers or gherkin.

  3. Boil over low heat for a few minutes.

  4. Thicken the mixture with butter and flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Season the scored meat with pepper and salt.

  2. Rub the seasoned meat with egg yolk.

  3. Sprinkle the meat with bread crumbs.

  4. Sprinkle the meat with parsley.

  5. Broil the meat until brown.

  6. Serve the meat with the hash.

  7. Garnish with brain cakes, forcemeat balls, and crisp bacon.

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. Capers + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Walnut + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 that forms the body of the hash and the broiled dish.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, with flour, thickens the mixture for a rich body.
Flour
Thickens the gravy-based sauce together with butter.
Egg yolk
Binds the crumbs to the scored meat and helps it brown under heat.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden crust on the broiled meat.
Walnut pickle
Adds tangy, savoury acidity that cuts the richness of the meat.

The step that matters

Broil the meat until brown. Broiling is brief and intense, so the crumb and egg-yolk coating can scorch before the surface browns evenly. Watch closely and stop once golden, since the Maillard browning that gives flavour and colour happens quickly at high heat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, ketchup, red wine, capers, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, ketchup, red wine, capers, butter, flour, pepper. 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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