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Ox-head Soup

A hearty soup made from a cleaned ox head, vegetables, herbs, and spices, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox-head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Wash the ox head in three waters and break the bones with a hammer.

  2. Place the head in cold water and bring to a slow boil, skimming well.

Make the soup

  1. Add the sliced vegetables and stew gently for three hours until the liquid reduces to four quarts.

  2. Remove the head and let it cool in the open air.

  3. Strain the liquid, rubbing the vegetables to a pulp.

  4. Return half of the liquid to the fire, season, and skim as it boils for five minutes.

  5. Add three-fourths of the meat from the head, cut into dice, and simmer for half an hour before serving.

Store the rest

  1. Put the bones and remaining meat, well seasoned, into a jar, season the reserved stock, pour it in, and refrigerate until tomorrow.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-head
Provides the meat, bones and gelatin that give the soup its body and richness.
Turnips
Add sweetness and earthy flavor as they soften into the stock.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and color to the stock.
Onions
Build savory depth and aroma as they cook down in the liquid.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiling liquid. Skimming removes the grey foam of coagulated proteins and fat that would otherwise cloud the stock and taint its flavor. Doing it early and again after the first boil keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, onion, pepper, allspice. 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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