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Ox- Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox-tail, vegetables, and herbs simmered for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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-tail

  1. Wash the ox-tail thoroughly and place it in a kettle of cold water, then bring the water to a boil.

  2. Remove the ox-tail, dry it with a towel, and fry it brown in butter or drippings in a saucepan.

Make the soup

  1. Add flour to the saucepan and stir well, then cover the mixture with water and add the diced carrot, turnip, and potato.

  2. Stick the cloves into the whole onion and add it to the soup along with the herbs.

  3. Season to taste and cook slowly for 2 hours.

  4. Remove the onion and herbs before serving.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tail
Provides meat and gelatin-rich body that enriches the broth as it simmers.
Flour
Thickens the fat and cooking liquid into a smoother, slightly body-rich soup.
Butter or drippings
Carries heat for browning the ox-tail and adds rich, savoury flavour.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and soft texture as it cooks down into the broth.
Potato
Softens during simmering, adding starch that gives the soup more body.

The step that matters

Fry the ox-tail brown. Browning the meat before simmering creates Maillard flavours that a plain boil cannot produce, so the broth tastes deeper and richer.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, carrot, turnip, potato, onion):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, carrot, turnip, potato, onion. 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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