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Ox-head Soup

A hearty soup made from ox cheek, vegetables, herbs, and broth, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 the ox-cheek

  1. Soak the ox-cheek in cold water for 2 hours.

  2. Break the bones.

  3. Wash the meat in warm water.

  4. Place the meat in a pot.

  5. Cover with cold water.

Make the soup

  1. Bring to a boil.

  2. Skim the surface.

  3. Add celery, carrots, turnip, onions, pepper, allspice, sweet herbs, and parsley.

  4. Cover and simmer gently for 3 hours.

  5. Remove the head.

  6. Strain the soup into a stoneware pan.

  7. Cool overnight.

  8. Cut the meat into bite-sized pieces.

  9. Skim the broth.

Finish and thicken

  1. Combine 2 quarts of broth and the meat in a clean stew-pan.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Melt butter in a pan. Mix in flour until dry.

  4. Add to the soup. Stir well.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Allspice + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-cheek
Breaks down during long simmering to give the soup body and rich, tender meat.
Butter
Fat that, mixed with flour, forms a roux to thicken and enrich the soup.
Flour
Starch that thickens the broth once cooked with melted butter.
Onions
Release sweetness and savoury depth into the broth during slow simmering.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they cook.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the melted butter and stirred in smoothly; added raw or in clumps it stays lumpy and floury instead of thickening the soup evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, turnip, pepper, allspice, marjoram, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, turnip, pepper, allspice, marjoram, lemon. 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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