Skip to main content
Main

Oxtail Soup

A hearty soup made with oxtails, onions, carrot, turnip, herbs, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Oxtail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the oxtails into joints and blanch them in 3 quarts of cold water until boiling.

  2. Drain the oxtails, rinse them with cold water, and dry with a clean towel.

  3. Make a bouquet of parsley, thyme, marjoram, and bay leaves, tied together.

  4. Peel the onions and stick 6 whole cloves into one.

  5. Peel and dice the carrot and turnip.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, heat the butter and brown the oxtails.

  2. Stir in the flour and let it brown.

  3. Add 3 quarts of cold water, the carrot, turnip, onion, and bouquet; season with salt and pepper.

  4. Cover and let the soup simmer gently for 2 hours.

  5. Remove the onion and bouquet before serving.

  6. If the soup is not dark enough, add caramel for color.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Oxtails
Provide the meat and gelatin that give the soup its body and richness.
Butter
Carries the browning of the oxtails and adds richness to the soup.
Flour
Browns with the fat and thickens the soup slightly.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma as they simmer in the broth.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aroma to the broth as it cooks.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and body to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Browning the oxtails and flour. Browning creates flavour through the Maillard reaction, which gives the soup its deep colour and savoury taste. Pale meat or flour leads to a flat, washed-out broth, so the pieces should be well browned before liquid is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, parsley, thyme, marjoram, carrot, turnip):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, thyme, marjoram, carrot, turnip. 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 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes