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Calf's Feet Soup with Poached Eggs

A soup made from calf's feet, herbs, ham, onion, and water, finished with poached eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Calf's Feet Soup with Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the calf's feet, herbs, ham, onion, and water in a pot over low heat.

  2. Cook slowly until the liquid reduces to 2 quarts.

  3. Season the broth and let it cool with the meat in it.

Finish and serve

  1. The next day, skim off the fat and strain the broth.

  2. Heat the broth in a soup pot.

  3. Add the white and shell of an egg to poach.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's feet
Release gelatin and body into the broth, giving it a rich, silky texture.
Eggs
Set in the hot broth to form poached eggs served in the soup.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the finished broth.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat and strain the broth. Fat left on the chilled broth sets into a greasy layer and can cloud the soup. Skimming it cold and straining out solids gives a clear, clean-tasting broth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, thyme, parsley, pepper, sherry, ham, egg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, thyme, parsley, pepper, sherry, ham, egg. 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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