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Calf’s Head Fricasseed

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

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

  1. Cut the meat from the half-boiled calf's head into small pieces.

  2. In a pot, combine the meat with gravy, boiling water, sweet herbs, onion, and mace.

  3. Season with pepper, nutmeg, and salt.

Make the fricassee

  1. Mix flour and butter to form a paste, then add to the pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Remove the herbs and onion, then stir in the cream without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with small bits of bacon.

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 and gelatinous as it simmers in the sauce.
Flour
Combined with butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and combines with flour to form a thickening paste.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.
Gravy
Supplies savoury depth and body to the liquid the meat cooks in.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream without boiling. Cream can curdle or separate when it boils, so it should be stirred in off the heat or at a gentle warm temperature 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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