Name: Ox Tail Soup a LA Jardiniere
Ingredients: 1 large ox tail; cold water; 2 turnips; 2 large carrots; ½ pint button onions; 1 leek; 1 head of celery; 1 lump of sugar; coarse sea salt to taste

Why it works: Turnip and leek 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 Tail Soup a LA Jardiniere

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the ox tail into large pieces, ensuring not to cut completely through the joints.
Use a large knife to cut the bones in two by striking the back of the knife.
Place the pieces in a stewpan, cover with cold water, and bring to a boil.
Discard the water and wash the pieces of tail.
Cover the washed pieces with fresh cold water and boil until tender, skimming off any scum that rises.
Peel the turnips and scrape the carrots, then cut them into round balls using a scoop.
Prepare the button onions by cutting off the tops and bottoms, boiling for 2 minutes, then removing the skins.
Chop the white part of the leek and the celery into pieces that match the carrot and turnip balls.
In a quart of boiling water, add the carrots, turnips, leek, celery, and onions, along with a lump of sugar and salt to taste.

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.

Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,046 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,310 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the onion

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

Parsnipfits better
Beetrootfits better
Lettucefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, leek, celery, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.