Ox-Cheek Soup
salt, half that of pepper, browning, the. crust of a French roll, 5 quarts of water. INGREDIENTS for soup for 10 persons. An ox-cheek, 2 oz. of butter, 3 or 4 slices of lean ham or bacon, 1 parsnip, 3 carrots, 2 onions, 2 heads of celery, 3 blades of mace, 4 cloves, a faggot of savoury herbs, 1 bay-leaf, a teaspoonful of salt, half that of pep pepper, browning, the crust of a French roll, 5 quaris of water.
AVERAGE COST, 9d. per quart.
Lay the ham in the bottom of the stewpan, with the butter; break the bones of the cheek, wash it clean, and put it on the ham. Cut the vegetables small, omitting 1 head of celery; add them to the other ingredients, and set the whole over a slow fire for 1/4 of an hour. Now put in the water, and simmer gently till it is reduced to 4 quarts; take out the fleshy part of the cheek, and strain the soup into a clean stewpan; thicken with flour, put in a head of sliced celery, and simmer till the celery is tender. If not a good colour, use a little browning. Cut the meat into small square pieces, pour the soup over, and serve with the crust of French roll in the tureen. A glass of <herry much improves this soup. TIME.-3 to 4 hours.
SEASONABLE in witer.
A long-simmered brown soup built on one of the cheapest cuts on the carcass. The typography of the original has suffered: "5 quaris" is 5 quarts, "pep pepper" is pepper, and "<herry" is sherry.
- The hinge: reduce, don't top upThe whole character of the soup comes from taking 5 quarts down to 4 while the cheek cooks. Use a wide pan, keep it at a bare simmer with the lid ajar, and resist adding water when the level drops.
- Ox cheekBeef cheek, the muscle of the jaw — heavily worked, very collagen-rich, and now often sold trimmed and boneless. Ask a butcher; two whole cheeks (about 2-2.5 lb) stand in for the one cheek-and-bones of the original. If you get bones, keep them in, as they add useful body.
- TimeThe recipe allows three to four hours, and cheek needs about that long at a true simmer to pull apart under a fork. Judge by texture rather than the clock.
- Faggot of savoury herbsA tied bundle: parsley stalks, thyme, and often marjoram or savory. Tie it with string so it lifts out cleanly before straining.
- Mace and clovesBlade sizes vary, so treat three blades as an approximate quarter to half teaspoon of ground mace; blades steeped whole and strained out give a cleaner flavour. Four cloves is plenty for 4 quarts; more turns the soup medicinal.
- BrowningA Victorian staple — sugar cooked to a dark caramel and let down with water, sold ready-made or made at home, used purely for colour. A teaspoon of a modern gravy browning does the same, or brown the ham and cheek hard at the start and skip it.
- ThickeningNo quantity is given. For 4 quarts, about 3 tablespoons of flour slaked in cold water or worked into softened butter gives a lightly bodied soup; more than that and the collagen already in the stock will make it stodgy.
- SkimCheek and ham together throw a lot of fat. Skim through the simmer, and if you can chill the strained soup overnight the fat lifts off in a sheet.
- ServingTen portions as written. The "crust of a French roll" is a piece of dried bread crust set in the tureen to soak; a small piece of toasted baguette does the job. Add the glass of sherry off the heat, just before serving.
Ox cheek was one of the classic economies of the nineteenth-century kitchen: an offal-adjacent cut that few would roast but which yields, after hours of gentle cooking, both a gelatinous stock and a quantity of soft meat. Mrs Beeton's costing tells the story — 9d. a quart for a soup serving ten, at a time when a joint of prime beef was priced by the pound. The method is standard mid-Victorian soup-making, and worth reading as a template: a foundation of fat ham, vegetables sweated in butter before liquid goes in, a long reduction, then a strain and a second, briefer cooking with fresh celery added for texture and bite. The fondness for browning and for a glass of sherry at the end reflects a period taste for soups that were dark, glossy and emphatically seasoned; "seasonable in winter" is the honest note, since this is a dish for a range that is lit all day anyway.