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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, vegetables, bacon, and Worcestershire sauce, served with grated rusk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox-tails

  1. Parboil the ox-tails in water until tender.

  2. Cool the ox-tails and cut the meat into small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a pot.

  2. Fry the onions, turnip, carrots, celery, and bacon until softened.

  3. Add the beef extract to the pot with the liquid from the parboiled ox-tails.

  4. Stir in the fried vegetables.

  5. Thicken the mixture with flour.

  6. Add Worcestershire sauce.

  7. Bring the soup to a boil.

  8. Strain the soup.

  9. Return the cut ox-tail to the soup.

  10. Serve with grated rusk.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tails
Provide the meat and gelatin that give the soup its body and rich flavor.
Butter
Carries the fried vegetables and adds richness to the soup base.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, body-rich soup as its starch gelatinizes with heat.
Onions
Build savory sweetness and aroma as they soften and brown in the fat.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color while softening into the soup.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat and savory depth to the frying base.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid for the starch to swell and thicken evenly; adding it raw or in clumps leaves lumps and a floury taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, turnip, carrot, celery, beef, flour, sauce):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, turnip, carrot, celery, beef, flour, sauce. 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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