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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
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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

Make the broth

  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.

  3. Remove the ox tails and cut the meat into small pieces.

  4. Return the bones to the pot and boil for another hour.

  5. Strain the soup.

Finish the soup

  1. Rinse the arrowroot in a small amount of water.

  2. Add the arrowroot and the cut meat back to the soup.

  3. 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
Release collagen and rich flavor into the broth as they simmer for hours.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth.
Flour
Helps thicken the soup as it cooks.
Arrowroot
Thickens the soup to a glossy consistency when stirred in near the end.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot. Arrowroot must be rinsed in a little water first so it disperses evenly, then added to the simmering soup; boiling it for the final 15 minutes sets its thickening so the soup does not stay thin or lumpy.

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.

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