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Calf's Head Soup

A soup made from a calf's head, ham hock, onions, herbs, spices, and thickened with browned flour, served with egg yolks and meatballs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Calf's Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the soup

  1. Oil the calf's head with the ham hock and onions.

  2. Cook for three hours.

  3. Strain the soup from the head.

  4. Remove the brains and keep them in the soup.

  5. Refrigerate the soup overnight.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the soup on a brisk fire for two hours.

  2. Add the bunch of sweet herbs, cloves, mace, pepper, and salt to taste.

  3. Thicken the soup with browned flour.

  4. Serve in a tureen with the yolks of hard-boiled eggs and small force meat balls, adding wine 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 bulk and gelatin that gives the broth its body.
Ham hock
Adds savoury depth to the stock as it cooks.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aroma as they cook into the stock.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Yolks of hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a creamy texture to the served soup.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the finished soup.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with browned flour. Flour clumps when it hits hot liquid unless it is well dispersed. Stirring it in thoroughly lets the starch granules swell evenly, giving a smooth, uniformly thickened soup instead of lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, onion, clove, pepper, flour, egg, meat):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, clove, pepper, flour, egg, meat. 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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