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Calf's- Head Soup

A soup made by stewing a calf's head with herbs, onion, mace, barley, celery, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Calf's- Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Wash the calf's head thoroughly.

  2. Sprinkle the head with coarse sea salt to remove slime.

Cook the soup

  1. Place the head in a stew-pan with enough water to cover it.

  2. Add sweet herbs, onion with cloves, mace, and pearl barley.

  3. Cook the head until it is tender.

  4. Add stewed celery.

  5. Season the soup with pepper.

Serve

  1. Pour the soup into a dish.

  2. Place the head in the center of the dish.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Barley + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together571 recipes

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

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Forms the main body of the soup and gives rich flavour and gelatin as it cooks.
Pearl barley
Thickens the broth and adds body as it softens during cooking.
Stewed celery
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Cook the head until it is tender. The head contains tough connective tissue and gelatin-rich parts that need long, gentle simmering to soften. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and cloud the broth, so it should stay at a gentle simmer until fully tender.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, barley, celery, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, barley, celery, 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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