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Ox Cheek Soup

A hearty soup made by simmering an ox cheek with salt, pepper, water, celery, vegetables, and optional rice or beans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Ox Cheek Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the ox cheek with salt and pepper.

Simmer

  1. Place it in a pot with cold water and bring to a boil.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer gently for 3 hours.

  3. Skim off any fat that rises to the surface.

  4. Add celery, onions, and any diced vegetables during boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat on a dish and the soup separately with bread.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Celery + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

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

  3. Rice + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Celery + peastop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox cheek
Long, gentle simmering breaks down its connective tissue, giving tender meat and a rich body to the broth.
Split peas, barley, or white haricot beans
Starchy grains and legumes thicken the soup and add body as they cook.
Flour
Starch that thickens the liquid when used for thickening.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat. Fat that rises during simmering can make the soup greasy and cloudy. Removing it as it forms keeps the broth clean and lighter in texture.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, celery, rice, flour):

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, celery, rice, flour. 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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