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Soup

Cow-heel Soup

A hearty soup made from cow heel, water, onion, carrot, celery, sago, parsley, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Cow-heel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Clean and scald the cow-heel, then divide it into 4 parts and place in a stewpan with cold water.

  2. Add a pinch of coarse sea salt, bring to a boil, skim off any foam, and add the onion, carrot, and celery.

  3. Let the mixture simmer gently for about 3 hours or longer.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove some meat from the bones, chop it finely, and return it to the broth.

  2. Stir in the sago or crushed tapioca and boil for another 25 minutes.

  3. Serve hot, adding chopped parsley and lemon juice just before serving.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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

Sago or crushed tapioca
Thickens the broth as its starch swells and softens during boiling.
Cow-heel
Releases gelatin into the water, giving the soup body and a rich mouthfeel.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam after boiling. Foam rising at the start of boiling carries impurities and scum that can cloud the broth and taint its flavour, so it should be skimmed off before the vegetables are added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, parsley, lemon, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, parsley, lemon, pepper, nutmeg. 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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