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Ox-cheek Soup, H LA Flamande

A hearty soup made with ox cheeks, onion, carrots, celery, garlic, bay leaf, peppercorns, and beef stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Ox-cheek Soup, H LA Flamande

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. In a large pot, combine ox cheeks, onion, carrots, celery, garlic, bay leaf, and peppercorns.

  2. Add beef stock and bring to a boil.

Simmer and serve

  1. Reduce heat and simmer for 2-3 hours until the meat is tender.

  2. Remove the ox cheeks, shred the meat, and return it to the pot.

  3. Season with salt to taste and serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox cheeks
Collagen-rich meat that breaks down during long simmering, turning tender and silky.
Beef stock
Provides the liquid base that cooks the meat and carries the flavour of the soup.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it softens into the broth.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the broth as they cook.
Garlic
Adds aromatic pungency that mellows and deepens during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer until the meat is tender. Ox cheek is full of connective tissue that needs a long, gentle simmer to convert into gelatin. Cooking too hard or stopping too early leaves the meat tough and stringy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, celery, garlic, beef):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, celery, garlic, beef. 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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