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Ox Head Soup

A hearty soup made from an ox head, vegetables, herbs, and spices, simmered for hours and served with boiled carrots and turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Ox Head Soup

2 quarts of soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Soak and clean the ox head as directed.

  2. Place the head in a pot with cold water to cover it.

  3. Bring the pot to a boil.

  4. Skim the surface closely.

  5. Add the celery, carrots, turnips, onions, sweet herbs, allspice, and black pepper.

  6. Cover the pot and simmer over low heat for three hours.

  7. Skim the broth again when it boils.

  8. Remove the head.

  9. Strain the broth into a deep pan.

  10. Let the broth cool.

Make the hash

  1. Cut the meat into pieces for hash.

  2. Simmer the meat with 2 quarts of the broth.

  3. Add salt to taste.

  4. Mix the meat with 2 ounces of butter and enough flour to thicken.

  5. Season the mixture with cayenne, wine, or brandy.

Serve

  1. Boil and cut the additional carrots and turnips into small pieces.

  2. Warm the pieces in the soup.

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. Celery + carrottop 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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox head
Provides the meat for the hash and rich flavour to the broth.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the meat mixture.
Flour
Thickens the meat mixture so it holds together.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the broth as it simmers.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour to the broth.

The step that matters

Skim the broth. Skimming removes foam and fat that would otherwise cloud the broth and taste greasy. Doing it closely at the start and again at the boil keeps the soup clear and clean-flavoured.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, turnip, allspice, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, turnip, allspice, pepper, butter, flour. 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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