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Ox Tail Soup

A preserved soup made from ox tails, beef essence, jelly, mushroom catsup, and spices, canned in 2‑lb cans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ox Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Wash the ox tails in cold water.

  2. Cut the ox tails into small pieces at the joints.

  3. Cook the pieces in boiling water for 20 minutes, skimming off any scum.

  4. Remove the knuckles and separate the meat from the bones.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine beef essence, jelly, and mushroom catsup.

  2. Make a thin batter with flour.

  3. Sieve the batter.

  4. Stir the batter into the soup mixture.

  5. Season the soup with white pepper, nutmeg, mace, cloves, and sugar.

  6. Boil all ingredients together until ready to can.

Can and process

  1. In 2‑lb cans, place 4 oz of meat and fill with soup to weigh 2 lb 1 oz.

  2. Wipe the cans.

  3. Cap the cans with vents open.

  4. Process the cans for 1 hour 30 minutes at 3 lb pressure.

  5. Slowly release pressure.

  6. Remove the cans.

  7. Quickly seal the vents.

  8. Return the cans to the retort.

  9. Boil the cans for 1 hour 45 minutes at 9 lb pressure.

  10. Withdraw the cans.

  11. Cool the cans in a shower.

  12. Send the cans for labeling.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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-rich body that gives the soup its savory base.
Flour
Thickens the soup as a starch that swells when heated in the liquid.
Beef essence
Supplies concentrated beef flavor that forms the savory backbone of the soup.
Jelly
Adds gelling body and richness to the liquid base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savory and spiced flavors.
White pepper
Contributes mild, sharp warmth to the seasoning.

The step that matters

Sieve the batter before stirring it in. Sieving breaks up lumps of flour so the thickener disperses evenly instead of forming clumps that stay raw and gritty in the finished soup.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, mushroom, flour, nutmeg, mace, clove, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mushroom, flour, nutmeg, mace, clove, sugar. 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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