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Plain Pice and Meat Soup

A soup made from ox cheek, onions, herbs, rice, pepper, salt, and optional curry powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Plain Pice and Meat Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak and clean the ox cheek.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the ox cheek in water with onions and sweet herbs.

  2. Strain the broth and cut the meat into pieces.

  3. Return the meat to the stock and add rice, pepper, and salt.

  4. Season with curry powder if desired.

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. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox cheek
Slow boiling turns the tough connective tissue into tender, rich meat in the broth.
Rice
Starch thickens the broth slightly and adds body as it cooks.
Onions
Release sweetness and savory depth into the broth as they cook.

The step that matters

Boil the ox cheek in water with onions and sweet herbs. Ox cheek is tough collagen-rich meat that needs a long, gentle simmer rather than a hard boil. Too fierce a boil toughens the proteins and can leave the meat stringy, while a low, slow simmer lets collagen break down into gelatin, giving tender meat and a silky broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, pepper. 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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