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Hessian Soup and Ragout

A hearty soup made with neat's tongue, ox's head, peas, vegetables, and seasonings, served with optional ragout.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 25 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 ↓

Hessian Soup and Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Clean the neat's tongue and ox's head with salt and water, then soak in plain water.

  2. Stew the tongue and head in 5-6 quarts of water until tender.

  3. Let the soup cool, then remove the fat for later use.

Make the soup

  1. Add split or whole peas, carrots, turnips, potatoes, onions, sweet herbs, and celery to the soup.

  2. Simmer until the vegetables are soft enough to puree with the peas through a sieve.

  3. Season the soup with pepper, salt, mace, allspice, ground cloves, and Cayenne.

  4. If the soup is not thick enough, boil in a slice of bread or add rice flour gradually.

Make the ragout and serve

  1. For the ragout, cut the best parts of the head and tongue into small pieces.

  2. Rub the pieces with seasoning and add to 1 quart of reserved broth.

  3. Flour the meat and simmer until tender.

  4. Add mushroom ketchup, walnut ketchup, soy sauce, port wine, and mustard, then boil 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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Split peas
Break down when simmered to thicken and give the pureed soup its body.
Potatoes
Break down as they cook, adding starch that thickens the soup.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they simmer, building the savory base of the soup.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavor and body to the stewed vegetable base.

The step that matters

Puree the soup through a sieve while the vegetables are soft. Vegetables must be fully tender so the pulp passes smoothly through the sieve. Undercooked pieces stay grainy and leave the soup uneven in texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, carrot, turnip, potato, onion, celery, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, carrot, turnip, potato, onion, celery, 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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