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Calf's Head Fricasseed

A stew of calf's head, onion, herbs, mace, and gravy, thickened with flour and butter, finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Calf's Head Fricasseed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Clean the calf's head.

  2. Half-boil the calf's head.

  3. Cut the meat into small bits.

Make the fricassee

  1. Place the meat in a pot with gravy, boiling water, herbs, onion, and mace.

  2. If available, add boiled and blanched cockscombs or sweetbread.

  3. Season with pepper, nutmeg, and salt.

  4. Mix flour and butter.

  5. Add the mixture to the pot and bring to a boil.

  6. Remove herbs and onion.

  7. Stir in cream without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve with small bits of bacon and meatballs.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 main meat, which becomes tender after half-boiling and simmering in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, cohesive sauce when cooked with butter.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and helps bind the flour into a smooth roux.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce when stirred in off the boil.
Gravy
Supplies the savory meat base that gives the fricassee its main flavor.

The step that matters

Stir in cream without boiling. Cream can separate or curdle when boiled for long, so it is added off the heat or at low heat to keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, nutmeg, flour, butter, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, nutmeg, flour, butter, cream. 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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