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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, vegetables, and seasonings simmered for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the ox-tails at the joints and slice the vegetables.

  2. Mince the pork.

Brown the meat and onions

  1. In a stew pan, heat the pork until hot, then add the onions.

  2. When the onions begin to color, add the ox-tails and fry for a short time.

  3. Cut the ox-tails to the bone to release the juices.

Simmer and strain

  1. Transfer the ox-tails and fried onions to a soup pot with 4 quarts of cold water.

  2. Let the mixture simmer for about 4 hours.

  3. Add the remaining vegetables, cloves stuck in a piece of onion, and season with pepper and salt.

  4. Once the vegetables are cooked, strain the soup.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tails
Release gelatin and deep meaty flavor as they simmer slowly in the water.
Pork
Adds savory fat and richness to the broth as it heats and browns.
Onion
Browning in the fat builds sweetness and depth of flavor in the soup.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the broth as they cook.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory background flavor to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Frying the onions and ox-tails. Browning the onions and searing the ox-tails develops deeper, roasted flavors through the Maillard reaction. Pale frying gives a flatter, less rich broth, so cook until the onions just begin to color.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, parsley, pork, clove, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, parsley, pork, clove, 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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