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Ox Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, butter, water, salt, pepper, allspice, onions, carrot, turnip, and celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

  1. The day before serving, cut the ox tails into pieces and brown them in butter after removing all the fat.

  2. Set the browned tails aside until the next day.

Make the soup

  1. Remove any grease, then boil the tails in 3 quarts of water.

  2. Add salt, pepper, allspice, onions, carrot, turnip, and celery.

  3. Boil for 4 to 5 hours.

Strain and serve

  1. Remove the meat, strain the soup, and return some of the best meat to the soup before serving.

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. Carrot + turniptop 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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 meaty flavor into the broth during long simmering.
Butter
Browns the tails, building savory, roasted flavor before simmering.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook down into the broth.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and body to the simmered broth.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, vegetal flavor to the long-simmered broth.

The step that matters

Removing the fat before browning and simmering. Fat that is not removed rises and stays in the broth as an greasy layer, dulling the flavor. Skimming grease before boiling keeps the soup clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, allspice, carrot, turnip, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, allspice, carrot, turnip, celery. 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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