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Boiling Meat

A dish of boiled calf's head served with a gravy made from the head's broth, herbs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiling Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Place the calf's head, sweet herbs, onion, lemon peel, and allspice in a saucepan with the quart of boiling liquor.

  2. Cover the pot and let it simmer slowly for at least an hour.

  3. Remove the bones and mix the flour with any leftover parsley and butter, then add it to the gravy.

  4. Simmer for another 10 minutes and strain through a fine sieve.

  5. Season the gravy with white wine or ketchup, white pepper, and salt.

Finish and serve

  1. Bring to a boil, skim off the scum, and add the slices of head and any ham, pork, or tongue.

  2. Heat gently until the meat is thoroughly hot but not boiling.

  3. Serve with toasted slices around the dish.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Calf's head
Provides the meat and gelatin that give the gravy body and the dish its main substance.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks, giving it a smooth, lightly bound texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the flour thicken smoothly.
White wine or ketchup
Adds acidity and savoury depth to season the gravy.

The step that matters

Heat gently until the meat is thoroughly hot but not boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can make the gravy break or turn cloudy, so gentle heat keeps the meat tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, lemon, allspice, flour, parsley, butter, white wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, lemon, allspice, flour, parsley, butter, white wine. 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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