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Ox'foot Soup

A hearty soup made from ox foot, leeks, turnip, potatoes, carrots, celery, tomatoes, parsley, saffron, and pea flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox'foot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash ox foot thoroughly and place it in a saucepan with 2 quarts water and 1 teaspoon salt.

  2. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 4 hours.

  3. Strain broth through a sieve into a basin and let it cool.

  4. Skim off fat from cooled broth.

Make the soup

  1. Return broth to saucepan and add carrot, leeks, turnip, celery, tomatoes, potatoes, and parsley.

  2. Add pinch of saffron and 1 tablespoon pea flour mixed with a little water, plus pepper and salt to taste.

  3. Strain soup again 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. Leek + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox foot
Releases collagen and flavour into the broth during long simmering, giving body to the soup.
Pea flour
Thickens the broth as it cooks, giving the soup a fuller, smoother body.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Potatoes
Release starch into the broth, adding body and making the soup heartier.

The step that matters

Adding the pea flour mixture. Flour mixed into hot liquid clumps unless it is first blended smoothly with cold water, so stirring it into a small amount of water before adding it keeps the soup smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (leek, turnip, potato, saffron, carrot, celery, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against leek, turnip, potato, saffron, carrot, celery, parsley. 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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