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Soup

Ox-cheek Soup

A soup of ox cheeks stewed with vegetables, herbs, and broth, thickened with flour and finished with sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Ox-cheek Soup

Why it works: Turnip and leek 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-cheek Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox cheeks

  1. Blanch the ox-cheeks in boiling water, remove gills, and chop the bones.

  2. Cut the flesh into medium-sized pieces, leaving the cheek part whole.

Make the broth

  1. Combine all ingredients in a stewpan and let it stew for 6 hours, skimming regularly.

  2. Remove the fleshy part of the cheeks and strain the broth through a fine sieve.

  3. Mix flour with cold broth and pour into the strained broth, stirring until boiling.

  4. Add finely chopped celery and sherry, then simmer until the celery is tender.

Serve

  1. Cut the meat into small square pieces and keep warm in a tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the meat and serve, adding browning for color.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 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-cheeks
Provide the meat and gelatinous body that enriches the broth as it stews.
Flour
Thickens the broth as it heats, giving it a fuller body.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, long-cooked broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavor and soft vegetable body to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and cold broth into the hot broth. Flour mixed with cold liquid stays smooth; adding it to hot broth without stirring can clump, so keep stirring until the soup boils and thickens.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, leek, parsley, thyme, flour, sherry):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celerythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, leek, parsley, thyme, flour, sherry. 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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