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Anna Prophet's Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, water, carrots, turnip, onions, parsley, black pepper, flour, and ox-tails.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Anna Prophet's Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine the beef and water in a large pot. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

  2. Add the carrots, turnip, onions, parsley, and black pepper. Simmer for 6–7 hours.

  3. Strain the soup and mix 1 pint of it with the browned flour. Stir this mixture back into the soup.

Prepare the ox-tails

  1. Prepare the ox-tails by cutting them into joints and washing them in cold water several times.

  2. Pour boiling water over the ox-tails, then let them cool and soak in fresh cold water for several hours.

  3. Gradually brown the flour in a Dutch oven, stirring frequently to prevent burning.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the prepared ox-tails to the soup and let it simmer for an additional 2 hours.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Gravy beef
Breaks down during long simmering to give the broth body and savoury depth.
Ox-tails
Release collagen as they simmer, giving the soup a rich, silky body.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty flavour from the browning.
Red onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as they cook down.

The step that matters

Gradually brown the flour. Flour browns unevenly and can scorch quickly over direct heat. Frequent stirring keeps it colouring evenly, since burnt flour gives a bitter taste that spoils the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, parsley, pepper, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, parsley, pepper, 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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