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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, onion, herbs, and spices, simmered for six hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and cut the ox tails at the joints.

  2. Heat the drippings in a pot and sauté the onion and half of the ox tail.

Make the soup

  1. Add all ingredients to the soup kettle with the water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add the seasoning and vegetables.

  3. Cook slowly for six hours.

  4. Strain the soup, saving some pieces of meat.

  5. Remove the fat, reheat the soup, and adjust seasoning if necessary.

  6. Add small pieces of meat to each 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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tails
Provide the meat and collagen that give the broth body and richness during long simmering.
Onion
Sautéed first to build a sweet, savory aromatic base for the broth.
Beef or salt pork drippings
Fat used for sautéing that carries flavor from the onion and meat into the soup.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic vegetable flavor that rounds out the broth.

The step that matters

Remove the fat, reheat the soup, and adjust seasoning if necessary.. Long simmering concentrates flavors and salt, and fat rises to the surface as the broth cools. Skimming the fat before reheating keeps the soup clean-tasting, and tasting again lets the cook correct seasoning after reduction.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, beef, celery, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, beef, celery, parsley. 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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