Skip to main content
Main

Sheep's-head Soup

A soup made by simmering a cleaned sheep's head with water, onion, herbs, and optional trotters and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Sheep's-head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Place the cleaned sheep's head in a stewpan with a little water, then heat the stewpan through.

  2. Fill the pot with more water.

  3. Simmer until the head is tender.

  4. Remove the head.

  5. Take the meat off the bones.

  6. Return the bones to the broth.

Make the soup

  1. Add chopped onion and sweet herbs to the broth.

  2. Add trotters and vegetables to an earthen jug with ½ gallon of water.

  3. Cover the jug.

  4. Bake until tender.

  5. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  6. Add the meat to the soup.

  7. Serve the head and trotters separately.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 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

Sheep's head
Provides the meat and bones that build the body and rich flavour of the broth.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic flavour to the broth as it cooks.
Trotters
Add gelatin from connective tissue, giving the broth body and a silkier mouthfeel.
Sweet herbs
Contribute aromatic, savoury notes that perfume the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer until the head is tender. Gentle simmering breaks down collagen in the connective tissue slowly, making the meat tender and the broth rich. A hard boil toughens meat and makes the broth cloudy.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, thyme, parsley, turnip):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits about as well
  3. Carrotthe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, thyme, parsley, turnip. 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