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Calf’s Head, to Hash. No. 3

A hash made from boiled calf head, brown butter, gravy, brains, eggs, cream, flour, nutmeg, parsley, bacon bits, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Calf’s Head, to Hash. No. 3

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Cut the half-boiled calf's head into thin slices.

  2. Fry the slices in a pan with brown butter.

Stew and toss the meat

  1. Add the gravy to a tossing pan.

  2. Stew the meat until tender.

  3. Toss the meat with burnt butter or butter rolled in flour.

Make the brain cakes and serve

  1. Mix the brains with eggs, cream, flour, nutmeg, and parsley.

  2. Fry the mixture in small cakes until golden.

  3. Garnish the dish with force-meat balls, fritters, bacon bits, and lemon slices.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 firm when stewed in gravy.
Brains
Form the soft, savoury mixture that is bound and fried into golden cakes.
Eggs
Bind the brain mixture so the small cakes hold their shape while frying.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the brain mixture soft inside.
Flour
Thickens the gravy and gives the cakes and meat a light coating for browning.
Brown butter
Adds nutty flavour and golden browning when the slices are fried.

The step that matters

Frying the brain cakes until golden. The mixture is soft and bound only by egg, so it can break or stay pale if the heat is too low or it is moved too early. Medium heat lets the outside set and brown before the centre overcooks.

“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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