Name: Oxtail Soup
Ingredients: oxtail; cold water; soup greens; coarse sea salt; celery salt; ¼ cup rice or barley

Why it works: Celery and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,169 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Oxtail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut oxtail into pieces at the joints.

Make the soup

Cover with cold water and add soup greens, coarse sea salt, and celery salt.
Boil until the oxtail is tender.
Strain the broth.
Add ¼ cup rice or barley and boil for 20 minutes longer.
Return the oxtail to the pot and 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.

Celery + ricetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,169 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Oxtail: Provides meat, collagen and fat that enrich the broth as it simmers.
Rice or barley: Adds body and starch that slightly thicken the broth and give it substance.

“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.