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Ox Cheek Soup

A hearty soup made with ox cheek, ham, vegetables, and seasonings simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash the ox cheek thoroughly in lukewarm water.

  2. Place the ox cheek in a large saucepan with the ham, onion, turnip, carrots, celery, peppercorns, mace, parsley, thyme, salt, bay leaf, and water.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil and remove the scum that rises to the surface.

  4. Reduce the heat and simmer gently for 4 hours.

  5. Remove the cheek from the broth.

Finish the soup

  1. Slice off about ½ pound of meat into ½-inch thick slices and return the sliced meat to the broth.

  2. Mix the ground rice or flour with mushroom ketchup and soy sauce, then add the mixture to the soup.

  3. Simmer for 1 hour.

  4. Shape the carrot and turnip into fancy shapes.

  5. Peel and trim the button onions.

  6. Cut the ox cheek slices into 1-inch square pieces.

  7. Fry the shaped vegetables and button onions in hot butter until tender and lightly browned.

  8. Strain the soup.

  9. Return the strained soup to the pan with the fried vegetables.

  10. Boil for 10–15 minutes before serving.

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. Turnip + carrottop 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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox cheek
Slow simmering breaks down its connective tissue, giving the meat a tender, gelatinous texture and a rich body to the broth.
Ground rice or plain flour
Starch thickens the broth as it cooks, giving the soup a fuller, smoother body.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds a concentrated savoury, umami depth to the broth.
Ham
Contributes salty, smoky meat flavour to the broth during the long simmer.
Button onions
Browning in butter adds sweetness and a caramelised flavour to the vegetables.

The step that matters

Simmering the broth gently. A gentle simmer, rather than a rolling boil, lets the collagen in the cheek dissolve slowly into tender meat and a clear broth. Boiling hard toughens the meat and clouds the soup.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, clove, turnip, 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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