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To Hash a Calf’s Head

A hash made from calf's head, eggs, herbs, and various seasonings, cooked with gravy and served with fried brain cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 27 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Hash a Calf’s Head

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Boil the calf's head until almost tender, then remove the best half from the bone carefully.

  2. Place the meat in a deep dish before a fire, ensuring no ashes fall into it.

  3. Pack the meat with a knife, grate nutmeg over it, and add egg yolks, pepper, salt, sweet herbs, bread crumbs, and chopped lemon peel.

  4. Dot with butter and baste, turning the dish to brown evenly.

  5. Cut the other half of the head and tongue into thin pieces and set aside.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine drawn gravy, sweet herbs, onion, pepper, salt, white wine, and shallots; boil for a few minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and add it to a clean stewpan with the hash.

  3. Flour the meat before adding it to the stewpan, then stir in mushrooms, pickle, ketchup, truffles, and morels.

  4. Stir for a few minutes, then beat half the brains and add to the stewpan with a bit of butter rolled in flour.

Fry the brain cakes

  1. For the remaining brains, beat them with lemon peel, nutmeg, beaten mace, thyme, parsley, and egg yolk.

  2. Fry the brains in little cakes in hot dripping until golden.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 meat that forms the body of the hash.
Egg yolks
Bind the meat and brains and help the mixture set when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the packed meat a light, tender body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown during basting and thickening.
Drawn gravy
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries the flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and coats the meat so the sauce clings to it.

The step that matters

Fry the brain cakes in hot dripping until golden. If the dripping is not hot enough, the cakes absorb fat and turn greasy rather than browning. Hot fat sears the outside quickly, forming a crisp crust that holds the soft interior together.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, bread, lemon, butter, white wine, shallot):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, bread, lemon, butter, white wine, shallot. 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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