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Calf's Head Cheese

A preserved meat jelly made from calf head, herbs, and spices, set in a gelatinous stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Calf's Head Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Wash the calf's head, cleaning the ears and scalding the nose and throat passages.

  2. Place the head in a large soup kettle and cover with cold water.

  3. Add the salt.

  4. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 2 hours.

  5. Remove the eyes and discard them.

  6. Take out the tongue and set it aside.

  7. Return the head to the pot, adding the carrots, onions, and 2 cloves of garlic.

  8. Boil until the bones slip out easily, about 3 hours total.

Pick the meat

  1. Remove the head, discard the bones and any hard cartilage.

  2. Put the large bones back in the kettle for soup.

  3. In a saucepan, combine smaller pieces of meat with 1 quart of the boiling liquid.

  4. Add 2 cloves of garlic, 10 cloves, and 20 allspice.

  5. Boil rapidly with the cover off.

Season and shape

  1. Chop the meat from the head into large pieces and mix with bread crumbs, sausage meat, vinegar, salt, cayenne, and black pepper.

  2. Add ground mace, cloves, and allspice to taste, along with the powdered herbs.

  3. Make the mixture soft and season to taste.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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, skin and gelatinous connective tissue that bind the set loaf together.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the cooking liquid and give the mixture body and a softer texture.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and richness, keeping the chopped meat moist as it sets.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps balance the rich meat.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma that mellows during the long simmer.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Boil until the bones slip out easily. Long simmering breaks down collagen into gelatin, which lets the meat set firmly when cooled. Undercooking leaves the mixture loose, while overcooking can make the meat mushy.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sage, parsley, thyme, bread, marjoram, vinegar, clove):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, parsley, thyme, bread, marjoram, vinegar, 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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