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Ox-TaIL Soup

A soup made with ox tails, vegetables, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Ox-TaIL Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox tails

  1. Cover the ox tails with water.

  2. Cook until almost done.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Cut the meat into small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Fry the turnip, carrots, onions, celery, and bacon until softened.

  3. Add beef broth to the water used for boiling the ox tails, along with the fried vegetables and browned flour.

  4. Season with Worcestershire sauce.

  5. Bring to a boil.

  6. Strain the mixture.

  7. Add the pieces of ox tail and sherry.

  8. Serve.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tails
Provide meat and gelatin that enrich the broth as they cook.
Butter
Fat for frying the vegetables, carrying flavour and aiding browning.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Onions
Build savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften in fat.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat and savoury depth to the vegetables.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic complexity to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture. Straining removes the cooked vegetable solids and bits so the soup is smooth and clear. Thickening from browned flour needs even mixing, so the flour should be fully incorporated before boiling again.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, turnip, carrot, celery, beef, flour, sauce):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, turnip, carrot, celery, beef, flour, 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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