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Calf’s Head Hashed

A savory hash made from boiled calf's head, brain, tongue, and other parts, simmered in a sauce of butter, herbs, stock, and Madeira.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Calf’s Head Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Boil the calf's head until well done, then remove it from the water, bone it, and set it aside.

  2. Prepare the sauce by melting the butter in a pan with the green onion, parsley, ham, garlic, and mushrooms over low heat until they begin to fry.

  3. Remove from heat, add the flour, and mix well.

  4. Gradually stir in the consommé and beef stock until smooth, then return to heat and stir until it boils.

  5. If the sauce is too thick, add more consommé and let it simmer until it reaches a sauce-like consistency.

Add the herbs and meat

  1. In a separate pan, sauté the chopped parsley, lemon thyme, and mushrooms in a small amount of butter until they begin to fry.

  2. Add a ladleful of consommé to the herbs and let it boil, then strain the sauce through a tammy.

  3. Combine the meat, white skin from the head, and tongue cut into small squares into the sauce, simmering gently.

Finish and serve

  1. Half an hour before serving, stir in the Madeira wine, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice, mixing well.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  3. Garlic + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted to fry the aromatics and form the base of the sauce, adding richness and flavour.
Flour
Mixed into the hot butter to form a roux that thickens the consommé into a sauce.
Consommé and beef stock
Liquid base that, once thickened, forms the body of the sauce.
Madeira wine
Added late to contribute sweetness and depth of flavour to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its flavour.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour. Flour must be mixed into the butter off the heat and the stock added gradually, then brought to a boil. This prevents lumps and lets starch swell evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, parsley, ham, garlic, mushroom, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, parsley, ham, garlic, mushroom, flour. 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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