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Hessian Soup and Bagout

A hearty soup made with neat's tongue, ox's head, peas, vegetables, and spices, thickened with bread or rice flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 Bagout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Clean the neat's tongue and ox's head with salt and water, then soak them 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 use in meat pies or basting.

Make the soup

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

  2. Simmer the vegetables without the meat until soft enough to pulp with the peas through a sieve.

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

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

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

Neat's tongue
Gives rich meat flavour and body to the stock as it stews.
Ox's head
Adds gelatin and depth of meaty flavour to the broth as it stews.
Split or whole peas
Break down when pulped, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Potatoes
Break down as they cook, adding starch that helps thicken the soup.
Rice flour
Starch that thickens the soup when added gradually (optional).

The step that matters

Pulping the vegetables and peas through a sieve. Vegetables must be cooked until fully soft so they pass smoothly through the sieve. Under-cooked pieces stay coarse and grainy, and the soup's texture depends on this pulped body.

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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