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Soup

Another Calf's-head Soup

A hearty soup made with veal, cow-heel, spices, and Madeira, served with forcemeat balls and hard‑boiled egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Another Calf's-head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pan, fry the veal in butter until light brown.

  2. Add the cow-heel meat, beef gravy, anchovy, cayenne, mace, and cloves to the pan.

  3. Stew the mixture slowly for 1 hour.

  4. Stir in the Madeira, leek, parsley, lemon thyme, lemon peel, and lemon juice.

  5. Let it stew gently for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with forcemeat balls and hard-boiled egg yolks.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal
Browned in butter, it adds savoury meaty flavour and body to the soup.
Beef gravy
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its flavour.
Cow-heel meat
Contributes gelatinous richness and body as it stews.
Madeira or white wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to balance the rich broth.
Butter
Browns the veal, creating savoury flavour through surface browning.

The step that matters

Stew the mixture slowly for 1 hour. Gentle, slow simmering keeps the broth clear and lets the meats become tender and release gelatin. A rolling boil would toughen the meat and cloud the soup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, meat, beef, anchovy, pepper, clove):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, meat, beef, anchovy, pepper, clove. 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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