Skip to main content
Main

Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, ham, vegetables, herbs, catsup, port wine, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the ox tails at the joints and wash them.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan and add the ox tails.

  3. Slice the carrots, turnips, onions, leek, and celery, then add the sliced vegetables and the savory herbs to the stewpan.

  4. Add ½ pint of water to the stewpan and cook over high heat until juices are drawn.

Make the soup

  1. Fill the stewpan with water and bring the mixture to a boil.

  2. Add the coarse sea salt.

  3. Skim the surface of the soup.

  4. Simmer gently for 4 hours until the ox tails are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the ox tails from the soup.

  2. Skim the soup and strain it.

  3. Thicken the soup with flour.

  4. Add the catsup and port wine, then return the ox tails to the soup.

  5. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  6. Serve the soup.

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 + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 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

Ox tails
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, giving the soup body and tender meat.
Butter
Melted fat in the stewpan carries flavour and helps the ox tails and vegetables brown lightly.
Onions
Sugars and aromatic compounds build a savoury, sweet base as they cook down.
Carrots
Natural sugars add sweetness and rounded flavour to the broth.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, depth and aroma to the finished soup.
Flour (in the method)
Starch thickens the strained broth so it has a fuller texture.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 4 hours. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the ox tails slowly convert to gelatin, which makes the meat tender and the broth silky. A hard boil toughens the meat and clouds the soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, pepper. 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 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesLeek SoupLeek Soup31 recipes