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Ox-head Soup

A soup made from an ox's head, tongue, and vegetables, seasoned with pepper, salt, mace, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Ox-head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the ox's head, tongue, and vegetables (excluding the potatoes) in a large pot with the water.

  2. Bring to a boil slowly, ensuring the ingredients are covered with liquid.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the broth, removing bones and meat, and season it well.

  2. Pulp the vegetables into the soup and adjust seasoning.

  3. Pour any excess soup into a stock pot for later use.

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
Gives the soup its rich, meaty body as it simmers into broth.
Potatoes
Mashed into the soup to add body and thicken the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and earthy flavour to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the broth.
Onions
Build savoury depth as they soften and flavour the broth.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil slowly, keeping everything covered with liquid. Gentle heating lets the meat and bones release flavour and gelatin without the broth turning cloudy or the meat toughening. Ingredients left exposed above the liquid can scorch or cook unevenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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