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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made by simmering oxtails with water, salt, onion, carrot, savory, pepper, ketchup, and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash the oxtails clean and place them in a kettle with nearly 1 gallon of cold water.

  2. Cook the meat until tender, then add a small handful of coarse sea salt.

  3. Remove the bones and let the soup stand covered until the next day.

  4. Two hours before serving, skim off the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the chopped onion, grated carrot, and summer savory.

  2. Season with pepper, tomato ketchup, and Worcestershire sauce.

  3. Boil for 1.5 hours and serve very hot.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Summer savory + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Oxtails
Provide the meat and collagen that give the broth its body and rich flavor.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the broth.
Carrot
Contributes natural sweetness and body to the soup.
Tomato ketchup
Adds acidity and sweet tang that rounds out the savory broth.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds fermented, savory depth and umami to the broth.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat before the final boil. Fat that rises from the meat can make the soup greasy and dull in flavor. Chilling the soup overnight lets the fat solidify on the surface so it lifts off cleanly.

Swap the summer savory

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, pepper, tomato, ketchup, sauce):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Summer savorythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, pepper, tomato, ketchup, sauce. 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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