Skip to main content
Main

Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, onions, carrots, turnip, flour, white pepper, and water, thickened with arrowroot.

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

Why it works: Turnip and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the ox tails, onions, carrots, turnip, flour, white pepper, and water.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 2 hours.

Strain and finish

  1. Remove the tails, cut the meat into small pieces, and return the bones to the pot.

  2. Boil for another hour, then strain the soup.

  3. Rinse the arrowroot in water and add it to the strained soup along with the meat.

  4. Boil for an additional 15 minutes.

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. Turnip + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Flour + arrowroottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together525 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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
Meat and bones add body and rich flavor as they simmer for hours.
Onions
Form the aromatic base and add mild sweetness as they cook down.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color to the broth.
Flour
Thickens the broth as it cooks in the pot.
Arrowroot
Thickens the strained soup, giving it a smooth, lightly glossy body.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot. Arrowroot thickens when heated in liquid, so it is added to the strained soup near the end. Boiling it for too long can break down its starch and thin the soup again, so the final 15 minutes should be timed carefully.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, turnip, flour, arrowroot):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, turnip, flour, arrowroot. 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.

More ox tail soup recipes

Clear 5 See all 157 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesArrowroot GruelArrowroot Gruel37 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes