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Ox-Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, butter, vegetables, and flavored with catsup and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ox-Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the ox tails at the joints.

  2. Wash the ox tails.

  3. Slice the vegetables.

Make the broth

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the ox tails to the stewpan.

  3. Add the sliced vegetables with the herbs.

  4. Pour in ½ pint of water.

  5. Stir the mixture over high heat until juices are drawn.

  6. Fill the stewpan with water, then add salt.

  7. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  8. Skim the surface of the soup.

  9. Simmer gently for 4 hours until the tails are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the ox tails from the soup.

  2. Skim the soup again.

  3. Strain the soup.

  4. Thicken the soup with flour.

  5. Flavor the soup with catsup and port wine.

  6. Return the ox tails to the soup.

  7. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  8. Serve 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. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tails
Release gelatin and meaty flavor into the broth as they simmer slowly until tender.
Butter
Carries flavor and browns the ox tails, adding richness to the broth.
Onion
Builds savory aromatic flavor as it softens into the broth.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and body to the broth as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the strained broth so it has more body.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for the full 4 hours. Keeping the soup at a gentle simmer for the full four hours matters because a hard boil breaks up the surface and emulsifies fat into the broth, making it cloudy and greasy, while slow heat gently softens the connective tissue in the tails.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, flour, port wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, flour, port wine. 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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