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Ox Tail Soup, Clear

A clear soup made from ox tail, carrots, onion, parsley, thyme, celery, mace, salt, peppercorns, and water or stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Ox Tail Soup, Clear

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox tail

  1. Wash the ox tail pieces.

  2. Boil the ox tail pieces in water for 15 minutes, then drain them.

  3. Wipe the ox tail pieces with a soft cloth.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine the ox tail, carrots, onion, parsley, thyme, celery, mace, salt, peppercorns, and water or stock.

  2. Boil the mixture and remove any scum that rises.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer gently until the meat is tender, about 3 hours.

  4. Lift out the ox tail pieces and strain the soup.

  5. Clarify the soup if necessary.

Serve

  1. Cut the additional vegetables into small shapes or thin shreds.

  2. Simmer the vegetables in the clarified stock until tender.

  3. Heat the ox tail pieces and serve with the soup poured over them.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tail
Releases collagen and flavour into the stock, giving the meat body and a rich taste when simmered.
Water or clear stock
Acts as the cooking liquid that extracts flavour and gelatin from the meat and vegetables.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aroma to the broth as they simmer.
Celery
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the broth during the long simmer.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma; studded cloves add a warm, spiced note.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after the boil. A rolling boil makes the stock cloudy and can toughen the meat, so keep it at a gentle simmer. Skimming scum after the first boil keeps the soup clear.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, clove, parsley, thyme, celery, mace, beans):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, clove, parsley, thyme, celery, mace, beans. 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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