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Soup

Ox-heel Soup

A hearty soup made from ox heel, celery, onion, turnip, tarragon vinegar, flour, pepper, sea salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 456 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ox-heel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the ox heel until tender, then remove the meat from the bones and cut it into small dice.

Make the soup

  1. In a pan, combine the diced meat, chopped vegetables, and 3 pints of water. Simmer for 1 hour.

  2. Add the tarragon vinegar, pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste.

  3. Thicken the soup with a little flour 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. Celery + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together456 recipes

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

  2. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + tarragontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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 heel
Provides the meat and gelatinous body that gives the soup its richness.
Flour
Thickens the soup's liquid so it becomes smoother and more substantial.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds a bright acidity that balances the rich, savoury broth.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with a little flour before serving. Flour must be stirred in smoothly and cooked through, otherwise it can clump and leave a raw, pasty taste. Adding it near the end keeps the soup from over-thickening.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, turnip, tarragon, vinegar, flour, pepper):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, turnip, tarragon, vinegar, flour, 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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