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Calf's Head a LA Terrapin

A stew of calf's head cooked with allspice, flour, butter, Madeira wine, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Calf's Head a LA Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Boil the calf's head until tender.

  2. Reserve 1 pint of the cooking water.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the white flour and browned flour, cooking until lightly browned.

  3. Gradually add the reserved cooking water, stirring to avoid lumps.

  4. Add the allspice, salt, cayenne pepper, and mace to taste.

  5. Stir in the Madeira wine and simmer for a few minutes before serving.

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. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that is cooked until tender.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, carrying flavour into the roux.
White flour
Thickens the sauce with the butter as a roux.
Browned flour
Adds a toasted, nutty colour and aroma to the sauce.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and aroma, rounding out the sauce's flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the cooking water to the roux. Adding liquid all at once or too quickly to a hot roux causes lumps because the starch clumps before it disperses. Adding it gradually while stirring lets the flour hydrate evenly and thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (allspice, flour, butter, madeira wine, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against allspice, flour, butter, madeira wine, 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.

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