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Ox'Cheek Soup {<j LA Mode)

A hearty soup made with ox cheek, vegetables, herbs, spices, bacon, and a thickening mixture of flour, soy sauce, vinegar, mushroom ketchup, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 27 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ox'Cheek Soup {<j LA Mode)

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Wash the ox-cheek.

  2. Place the ox-cheek in an iron pot with onions, carrot, celery, turnip, sweet herbs, parsley, black onion, cloves, peppercorns, sugar, mustard, curry powder, black pepper, garlic, salt, bacon, and water.

  3. Bring the pot to a boil and skim off the foam.

  4. Simmer for three hours.

Thicken and finish

  1. Remove the ox-cheek from the pot and cut it into six half-inch slices, then return the cheek slices to the pot.

  2. Mix flour, soy sauce, vinegar, mushroom ketchup, and brandy, then stir the mixture into the soup.

  3. Simmer for two more hours.

Prepare the meat and vegetables

  1. Cut the meat slices into one-inch squares.

  2. Dice the carrot and turnip and peel the button onions.

  3. Fry the meat and vegetables in butter until browned and tender.

  4. Skim off the fat.

Combine and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a sieve.

  2. Add the meat and vegetables back into the soup and simmer for half an hour.

  3. 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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-cheek
Provides rich meat and gelatin that enrich the broth during long simmering.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it is stirred in, giving it body.
Butter
Browns the meat and vegetables, adding rich flavour before they join the soup.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the soup.

The step that matters

Skim off the foam. Foam rising at the boil contains coagulated proteins and impurities that can cloud the broth and taste bitter if left in, so skimming keeps the soup clear and clean-flavoured.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, turnip, parsley, clove, sugar, mustard):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, turnip, parsley, clove, sugar, mustard. 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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