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Oxtail Soup

A hearty soup made with oxtail, beef, onions, carrots, thyme, parsley, pepper, and sea salt, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ox-tail into joints and fry them until brown in good dripping.

  2. Peel and slice the onions, and slice the carrots; fry them in the same fat.

  3. Remove the pieces of tail and tie the thyme and parsley in muslin; add to the soup pot.

Make the soup

  1. Add the fried tail, cut the beef into strips, and add it to the pot.

  2. Grate two whole carrots over the mixture, pour in the cold water, and boil slowly for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the soup, moisten with brown flour mixed with stock, and boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Season with pepper and salt, then 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
Browned on the bone, it releases gelatin and flavour into the broth as it simmers.
Lean beef
Contributes meaty flavour and body to the broth during the long simmer.
Onions
Frying them softens and sweetens them, building savoury depth in the base.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the soup as they cook down.
Brown flour (in the method)
Moistened with stock and boiled, it thickens the soup and adds a toasted note.

The step that matters

Frying the ox-tail until brown. Deep browning through the Maillard reaction creates the rich, roasted flavour the broth depends on. Pale frying gives a flat, weak soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

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