The cover art for The Rolling Stones’ Goat’s Head Soup features a beatific Mick Jagger swathed in some kind of pastel-tinged material, his head topped with a mysterious pinkish substance. Judging by the album title, I’m assuming this is intended to be some kind of cheesecloth, with Jagger’s head replacing the goat’s as part of a flavorful bouqet garni, ready to be plunged into the stew. As seen in the gatefold photo pictured above, the actual soup is prepared with far less delicacy. More commonly known as Mannish Water - a nod to its supposed aphrodisiac properties - the Jamaican goat’s head soup involves simmering various native vegetables and tubers, a slew of goat parts, scotch bonnet peppers and rum into a thin broth. A festival food usually reserved for bridegroom consumption on the eve of a wedding, it remains popular enough to merit a soup mix version from Grace, which would probably pair well with their version of Irish Moss, another hypothetical libido-fortifier. The company does not appear to provide any shortcuts for Cow Cod Soup, the bovine cousin to Mannish Water, which boasts a full roster of bull parts but appears to skip the head (too big for most pots, I imagine). As for the album, it was recorded in Kingston, with a full complement of Jamaican and Guyanese musicians, as the band continued their early ‘70s period of jet-setting dissipation and tax-refugee ennui, but contains no other direct references to Jamaican cuisine. For a more thorough discussion of the soup, and its potential magical qualities, see Pluto Shervington’s 1976 hit "Ram Goat Liver."
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