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Ox-Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tail, lean beef, carrots, onions, thyme, parsley, 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 ↓

Ox-Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the ox-tail into joints and fry them brown in good dripping.

  2. Slice the onions and 2 carrots, then fry them in the same dripping after removing the tail pieces.

  3. Tie the thyme and parsley in a lace bag and drop it into the soup pot.

  4. Add the fried tail and cut the beef into strips, then add to the pot.

Simmer and serve

  1. Grate 2 whole carrots over the meat, pour in the cold water, and boil slowly for 4 hours.

  2. Strain the soup, season to taste, and thicken with brown flour mixed with cold water.

  3. Boil for an additional 15 minutes 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.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 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. Carrot + thymetop 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

Ox-tail
Releases gelatin and rich meaty flavour into the broth during long simmering.
Lean beef
Adds meaty flavour and body to the soup as it cooks slowly.
Brown flour
Thickens the soup, giving it a fuller body when mixed with cold water first.
Onions
Fried until browned, they add sweetness and depth to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the soup as they break down.

The step that matters

Thickening with brown flour. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold water before adding, because dry flour dropped into hot liquid clumps and stays lumpy instead of thickening evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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