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Ox Heel Soup

A hearty soup made from ox heel, vegetables, herbs, and wine, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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. Cut the meat off the boiled heels into neat pieces and set aside.

  2. Place the trimmings and bones in a stew-pan with water and the unboiled heel cut into quarters.

  3. Add onions, turnips, carrots, eschalots, savory, thyme, and parsley.

  4. Cover and simmer gently for at least 7 hours, skimming off fat and scum regularly.

  5. Strain the liquid through a sieve into a clean stew-pan.

Finish the soup

  1. Melt butter in the stew-pan, then stir in the strained broth.

  2. Add the reserved meat, mushroom ketchup, wine, and season with salt.

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
Releases gelatin and collagen into the broth, giving it body and a rich mouthfeel.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they soften and release their flavour into the stock.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the stock during long simmering.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the finished soup a rounded, smooth richness.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that brightens the richness of the broth.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami depth to the soup.

The step that matters

Skimming during the long simmer. Fat and scum rise to the surface during the long simmer and, if left in, make the broth greasy and cloudy. Regular skimming keeps the stock clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, turnip, carrot, parsley, butter, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Red currantfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, turnip, carrot, parsley, butter, mushroom, ketchup. 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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