Skip to main content
Main

Clear Ox-tail Soup

A clear soup made from ox tails, stock, vegetables, and clarified with egg whites and shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Clear Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Soak the ox tails for 2 hours.

  2. Cut the tails into pieces and simmer in the stock for 3 hours.

  3. If using mushrooms, add them 1 hour before straining.

  4. Strain the soup and clarify it with the egg whites and shells.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the arrowroot with a little water, add it to the soup, and boil for 2 minutes.

  2. Cut the vegetables into pretty shapes and boil until tender.

  3. Add the vegetables, wine, and small diced meat from the ox tails to the soup just 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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  3. Celery + arrowroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + arrowroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,796 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tails
Release flavour and gelatin into the stock, giving the soup body and richness.
Eggs
Egg whites and shells gather fine particles as they set, clarifying the stock to a clear broth.
Arrowroot
Starch that thickens the soup slightly when boiled, giving a lightly silky body.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the finished soup.

The step that matters

Clarifying the strained soup with egg whites and shells. The egg whites must be whisked into the cool stock and brought slowly to a simmer without stirring once it starts to rise, so the proteins set into a raft that traps cloudy particles. Boiling hard or stirring breaks the raft and leaves the soup murky.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, mushroom, egg, wine):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, mushroom, egg, wine. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesArrowroot GruelArrowroot Gruel37 recipes