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Ox Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, onions, carrots, turnips, bay leaves, cloves, butter, salt, pepper, sherry, and caramel, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox tails

  1. Joint or chop the ox tails into 1-inch pieces.

  2. Melt the butter in a large pot and brown the smaller pieces of ox tail.

  3. Remove the browned pieces and set aside.

Make the soup

  1. In another pot, combine the vegetables, bay leaves, and cloves.

  2. Add all ingredients to a large pot with cool water.

  3. Turn on the stove, bring to a boil, and simmer for 1.5 hours.

  4. Remove the small pieces of tail after 1.5 hours.

  5. Cook the remaining large pieces for an additional 30 minutes or until very tender.

  6. Remove the large pieces, separate the meat, and return it to the kettle.

  7. Shut off the stove, remove the vegetables, and add salt, pepper, sherry, and caramel.

Can and process

  1. Divide the small joints among cans, fill with the hot broth, cap, tip, and process.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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 the meat and collagen that enrich the broth and become tender during long simmering.
Butter
Browns the ox tail pieces, adding roasted flavor and richness before simmering.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as they cook down.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.
Turnips
Add mild earthy flavor and body to the broth as they soften.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic complexity to the finished broth.

The step that matters

Simmering the large ox tail pieces until very tender. Collagen in the connective tissue breaks down into gelatin only with long, gentle simmering. Stopping too early leaves the meat tough and the broth thin, while a hard boil can make it cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, wine, butter, carrot, turnip, clove, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, wine, butter, carrot, turnip, clove, pepper. 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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