Skip to main content
Main

Ox-tail Soup

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

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 into pieces at the joints and wash them.

  2. In a large pot, melt the butter and add the ox tails, vegetables, and herbs.

  3. Add ½ pint of water.

  4. Cook over high heat until the juices are released.

Simmer the soup

  1. Fill the pot with water, bring to a boil, and add the salt.

  2. Skim the surface.

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

  4. Remove the tails.

  5. Skim the soup.

  6. Strain it.

  7. Thicken the soup with flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the catsup and port wine.

  2. Return the tails to the pot.

  3. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  4. Serve.

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
Break down into gelatin and rich meaty flavor as they simmer for hours.
Onions
Build a sweet, savory aromatic base that flavors the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the vegetable base of the broth.
Butter
Carries fat that softens the vegetables and adds rich flavor at the start.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, depth and aroma to the finished soup.
Catsup
Adds tang and sweetness that rounds out the seasoning.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 4 hours. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the tails slowly break down into gelatin, making the meat tender and the broth silky. A hard boil toughens the meat and makes the soup cloudy as fat and proteins emulsify into the liquid.

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