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Oxtail Soup

A hearty soup made with oxtail, beef, carrots, onions, thyme, parsley, pepper, and brown flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Oxtail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the oxtail at the joints.

  2. Fry the oxtail in good fat until browned.

  3. Fry the sliced onions and two carrots in the drippings.

Make the soup

  1. In a soup kettle, combine the oxtail, fried onions, fried carrots, water, and beef cut into pieces.

  2. Grate the remaining carrots over the mixture.

  3. Cook slowly for four hours.

  4. Thicken the soup with brown flour mixed with a little water.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup and serve with crisp crackers.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Oxtail
Gives the soup its rich, meaty flavor and gelatin as it cooks slowly.
Lean beef
Adds meat flavor and body to the broth during the long simmer.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the soup.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma when fried before simmering.
Brown flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Fry the oxtail until browned. Browning creates Maillard flavors that deepen the broth's taste. Pale frying yields a flatter, less savory soup, so the pieces should be well coloured before adding water.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, thyme, parsley, pepper, carrot, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, thyme, parsley, pepper, carrot, flour. 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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