Why it works: Butter and cream match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 41,494 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Also mentioned in the method: worcestershire sauce
Directions
Prepare the oxtails
Cut up the oxtails, separating them at the joints; wash them and put them into a stew-pan with the butter.
Cut the vegetables in slices and add them, with the peppercorns and herbs.
Put in half pint of water and stir over a sharp fire until the juices are drawn.
Simmer the soup
Fill the stew-pan with the remaining water and, when boiling, add the salt.
Skim well, and simmer very gently for four hours, or until the tails are tender.
Finish and serve
Take the tails out, skim and strain the soup.
Thicken with flour, and flavor with the ketchup.
Put the tails back, simmer for five minutes, and serve.
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. See the original page.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Butter + creamtop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together41,494 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + oystertop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together8,175 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
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Ham + oystertop 6% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together360 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Ham + muttontop 6% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together430 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Butter + flourtop 6% of all pairsAroma overlaplowMentioned together122,858 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely 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
- Oxtails (in the method)
- Provide the meat and gelatin that give the broth its body and richness.
- Flour
- Thickens the strained broth so it becomes smoothly viscous as it cooks.
- Ketchup
- Adds tangy, sweet-savory flavour to the finished soup.
- Butter
- Carries fat into the pan so the oxtails and vegetables brown and develop flavour.
The step that matters
Simmer very gently for four hours. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the oxtails slowly break down into gelatin without the meat toughening or the broth turning cloudy from a rolling boil.
Flavor stand-ins for the celery
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, ketchup, oyster, flour, cream, mutton):
- Celerythe original
- Nutmegabout as good a flavor fit
- Pepperabout as good a flavor fit
- Capersabout as good a flavor fit
Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, ketchup, oyster, flour, cream, mutton. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).
“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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