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Soup

Hessian Soup

A hearty soup made with ox head, split peas, potatoes, onions, turnips, carrots, celery, bread crumbs, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Hessian Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Clean the ox's head, rub it with salt and water, and soak it in warm water for 5 hours.

  2. Simmer the head until tender, then cool it and skim off the fat.

Make the soup

  1. Remove the head and add soaked split peas, potatoes, onions, turnips, carrots, and celery to the pot.

  2. Simmer the vegetables until they can be pulped through a sieve.

  3. Cut the meat into pieces and add it back to the soup along with the bread crumb and herbs.

  4. Season with allspice, pepper, salt, mace, and cloves.

  5. Boil once and serve.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox's head
Provides the meat and rich, gelatinous body for the broth.
Split peas
Thicken the soup as they break down and pulp through the sieve.
Potatoes
Add starch that helps thicken and body the pulped soup.
Bread crumb
Adds bulk and helps thicken the soup slightly.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and savory depth as they soften and pulp.

The step that matters

Simmer the vegetables until they can be pulped through a sieve. If the vegetables are undercooked they will not break down and pass through the sieve, leaving the soup gritty and thin. They must be fully soft so the starches and fibres release and thicken the broth evenly.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion, turnip, carrot, celery, bread, allspice):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, turnip, carrot, celery, bread, allspice. 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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