Skip to main content
Main

Calf's Head Cheese

A preserved meat made from boiled calf head, seasoned, wrapped, cooled, and sliced for sandwiches.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Calf's Head Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the head

  1. Boil the calf's head in enough water to cover it until the meat separates from the bones.

  2. Remove the head with a skimmer.

  3. Place the head in a wooden bowl or tray.

  4. Remove all bones.

  5. Chop the meat finely.

Season and press

  1. Season the meat with salt, pepper, and sweet herbs if desired.

  2. Place a cloth in a colander. Add the minced meat. Fold the cloth over the meat.

  3. Place a plate on top. Add a gentle weight.

Serve

  1. Once cooled, slice thinly for supper or sandwiches. Spread each slice with made mustard.

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 + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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 meat and natural gelatin that bind the chopped meat as it cools.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out moisture and flavour.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic heat to the seasoned meat.

The step that matters

Pressing under a gentle weight. The weight must be gentle but steady. Pressing compacts the chopped meat and lets the natural gelatin set it into a firm loaf that holds together when sliced. Too much weight can squeeze out the juices and make the texture dry.

“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.

More head cheese recipes

Calf's 5Pork 5Hogs 3Pig's 3 See all 91 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes