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Ox Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, celery, onion, cloves, parsley, and salt, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Ox Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the ox tails into pieces.

  2. In a pot, cook the chopped onion in a little bacon fat until softened.

  3. Add the cut-up ox tails to the pot and let them brown.

Simmer the soup

  1. In a soup pot, combine the water, browned tails, onion, celery, parsley, and cloves.

  2. Let the mixture simmer for three hours.

  3. Season with salt and pepper before removing from heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Set aside to cool, then remove all grease from the top.

  2. Strain the soup, add a few pieces of the tails, and heat until very hot.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tails
Release gelatin and meaty flavor into the broth during long simmering, giving body.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding aromatic depth to the broth.
Celery
Adds a fresh, savory vegetable background to the broth.

The step that matters

Removing the grease after cooling. Fat floats and sets as the soup cools, so chilling lets it solidify on top where it can be lifted off cleanly. Skimming while hot leaves fat mixed through the broth, making it greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, clove, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, clove, parsley. 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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