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Calf's Head Soup

A hearty soup made from a calf's head, vegetables, spices, and stock, thickened with rice flour and flavored with sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Calf's Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the celery, carrots, turnips, mace, cloves, and peppercorns in a large pot.

  2. Simmer gently for 6 to 7 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture into a clean pan and set aside.

Cook the calf's head

  1. Remove the bone from the calf's head.

  2. Wash the head.

  3. Roll the head up.

  4. Bind the rolled head with twine.

  5. Place the rolled head in a stewpan with the bones and tongue, and cover with beef stock.

  6. Stew for 1.5 hours.

  7. Transfer the head to a deep earthen pan and let it cool in the stock to prevent drying.

  8. Strain and skim the fat from the stock.

Make the soup

  1. Heat 5 pints of the stock in a large saucepan.

  2. Cut the head into small thick slices or 1-inch squares.

  3. Add the slices to the stock, along with the skin and tongue.

  4. If the skin is not tender, simmer gently until it is.

  5. Mix the rice flour with cayenne and mushroom ketchup, adding enough cold broth or water to achieve a batter-like consistency. Stir this mixture into the soup and boil for 8 to 10 minutes.

  6. Skim off any scum.

  7. Add the sherry.

  8. Serve the soup with fried forcemeat balls and a splash of lemon juice if desired.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour
Thickens the soup into a silky body as its starch swells when boiled.
Calf's head
Supplies gelatinous skin and meat that give the soup body and richness.
Beef stock
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries all the other flavours.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury umami flavour to the thickened soup.
Sherry
Adds a rounded, slightly sweet and acidic aroma at the finish.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice flour batter into the soup. Raw starch clumps if added dry or too thick; it must be fully smooth and thinned with cold liquid first, then boiled long enough for the starch to swell and thicken evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, turnip, clove, beef, rice, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, turnip, clove, beef, rice, flour. 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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