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A hearty soup made from a calf's head, bones, tongue, and spices, thickened with rice flour and served with forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

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

  2. Boil gently for 6 to 7 hours.

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

Cook the calf's head

  1. Remove the bone from the calf's head, wash it, roll it up, and bind it with twine.

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

  3. Stew for 1.5 hours.

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

  5. Once cool, 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 and add to the soup, along with the skin and tongue.

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

  4. Mix the rice flour with cayenne, mace, and enough cold broth or water to make a batter consistency.

  5. 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

Calf's head
Provides gelatinous body and rich flavour as it stews and softens in the stock.
Rice flour
Thickens the soup into a smooth body when stirred in and boiled.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the soup.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic richness at the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice flour batter into the soup. Rice flour mixed with cold liquid must be fully smooth before it goes in; otherwise it forms lumps. Boiling it for several minutes then cooks out the raw starch taste and thickens the soup 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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