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Hessian Soup and Ragout

A hearty ox-tail soup with peas, vegetables, and spices, served with a ragout of ox head and tongue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 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 base

  1. Clean the ox-tails and soak them in water.

  2. Stew the ox-tails 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 the split 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 with pepper, salt, mace, allspice, cloves, and cayenne.

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

Make the ragout

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

  2. Season the meat pieces and simmer them in a quart of the reserved soup.

  3. Add mushroom ketchup, walnut ketchup, soy sauce, port wine, and mustard, and boil together.

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

Ox-tails
Long stewing releases gelatin and meaty flavour into the broth, giving body to the soup.
Split peas
Break down during simmering and thicken the soup when puréed through a sieve.
Potatoes
Soften and break down into the purée, adding body and thickness to the soup.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding savoury depth to the broth.
Carrots
Cook soft and sweet, adding colour and body when puréed into the soup.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity aroma to the ragout as it boils with the other seasonings.

The step that matters

Remove the fat after cooling. Fat rises and solidifies as the soup cools, so skimming it off keeps the soup from tasting greasy and lets the flavour come through.

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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