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A boiled head of meat served hot with optional sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the head in a pot and cover it with cold water.

  2. Simmer gently for 1 hour and 15 minutes to 1 hour and 45 minutes until extremely tender.

  3. Remove the head from the pot and, if serving, take off the binding and serve hot with your choice of sauce.

  4. If using the head for other recipes, do not pour gravy over it and leave the binding on for several hours.

  5. For added flavor, boil the gravy until well reduced and jellied when cold.

  6. Add a bone of ham or slice of hung beef for flavor, and avoid vegetables if you want to keep it.

  7. You may add a little spice and a faggot of parsley, and a calf's foot for firmness.

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. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Oyster + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 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

Meat head
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and meaty after long simmering.
Calf's foot
Adds gelatin, which helps the cooled liquid set into a firm jelly.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until extremely tender. A gentle simmer breaks down connective tissue slowly; a hard boil toughens meat proteins and can break the head apart, so the pot should barely bubble.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, sauce, oyster, egg, ham):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sauce, oyster, egg, ham. 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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