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Ox-heel Soup

A hearty soup made from ox heels, vegetables, herbs, and a butter‑flour roux, finished with lemon, wine, and mushroom ketchup.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Prepare the ox heel the day before serving. Cut the meat from the boiled heels into small pieces and set aside.

  2. In a stew pan, combine the trimmings, bones, and water. Add the unboiled heel cut into quarters, onions, turnips, carrots, eschalots, thyme, and parsley.

  3. Cover and simmer gently for at least 7 hours, skimming off fat and scum as it rises.

  4. Strain the liquid through a sieve.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a clean stew pan, melt the butter and stir in enough flour to make a stiff paste.

  2. Gradually add the soup liquid to the paste, bring to a boil, and strain again.

  3. Add the lemon peel, bay leaves, and reserved meat. Simmer for another 30 minutes until the meat is tender.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice, wine, and mushroom ketchup 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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
Gives the soup its rich body and gelatin-based silky mouthfeel as it simmers.
Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux that thickens the strained stock.
Flour
Combined with the melted butter, it forms a paste that thickens the soup liquid.
Onions
Release sweetness and savory depth into the stock during long simmering.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the finished soup and balances its richness.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Skimming fat and scum during the long simmer. Fat and scum rise to the surface and, if left in, cloud the stock and make it greasy. Skimming as they rise keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, lemon, parsley, butter, flour, wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, lemon, parsley, butter, flour, wine. 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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