Skip to main content
Main

Sheep's Head Broth

A hearty broth made from a sheep's head, carrots, turnips, onions, parsley, salt, pepper, and oatmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sheep's Head Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the sheep's head thoroughly and soak it in warm water for 2 hours.

  2. Place the sheep's head in a saucepan and cover it with cold water.

  3. Bring the liquid to a boil.

Make the broth

  1. Add the chopped carrots, turnips, onions, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Mix the oatmeal with a little stock from the pan, then stir the oatmeal mixture into the broth.

  3. Remove the pot from heat.

  4. Let the broth simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours with the lid tightly fastened.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's head
Provides the meat, bone and gelatin that give the broth its body and flavour.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aromatic flavour as they soften in the broth.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and earthy flavour to the broth.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma as they cook down into the broth.
Scotch oatmeal
Thickens the broth slightly as its starch gelatinises during simmering.

The step that matters

Removing the pot from heat before the long simmer. The record lists removing the pot from heat right before a 1.5 to 2 hour simmer, which contradicts the step order; the cook should confirm whether the pot stays on the heat for the simmer, since a broth that is not kept at a gentle simmer will not cook the head through or extract its gelatin.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, parsley, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, parsley, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes