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Ox'foot Soup

A hearty soup made from ox foot, vegetables, and pea flour thickener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox'foot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash the ox foot thoroughly.

  2. Place the ox foot in a saucepan with 2 quarts of water and 1 teaspoon of salt.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Let it boil slowly for 4 hours.

  5. Strain the broth through a sieve into a basin.

  6. Let the strained broth cool.

  7. Skim off the fat from the cooled broth.

Make the soup

  1. Return the broth to the saucepan.

  2. Add the carrot, leeks, turnip, celery, tomatoes, potatoes, and parsley.

  3. Add a pinch of saffron and 1 tablespoon of pea flour mixed with a little water, or use 1 tablespoon of flour and 1 ounce of butter.

  4. Season with pepper and salt to taste.

  5. Strain and serve.

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. Leek + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Pea flour
Thickens the broth so the soup has body.
Potatoes
Break down slightly as they cook, adding starch and body to the soup.
Leeks
Add mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Ox foot
Releases gelatin and flavour into the broth during long simmering.

The step that matters

Skimming the cooled broth. Fat that is not removed floats on the soup and makes it greasy. Cooling the broth first lets the fat solidify on the surface so it lifts off cleanly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (leek, turnip, potato, saffron, carrot, celery, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against leek, turnip, potato, saffron, carrot, celery, parsley. 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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