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Ox Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with lean beef, ox tails, vegetables, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ox Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the beef, ox tails, onion, celery root, parsley, and carrots.

  2. Add the water and bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer for 4 hours until the liquid is reduced by half.

  4. Strain the soup.

Thicken and finish

  1. Return the pieces of ox tail and chopped carrots to the pot.

  2. In a separate pan, brown the flour in the fat.

  3. Add the browned flour mixture to the soup to thicken.

  4. Optionally, add dumplings or green peas 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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Breaks down during long simmering, giving the broth body and savory depth.
Ox tails
Release gelatin and collagen into the broth, adding richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Browned in fat and stirred in, it thickens the soup as its starch swells.
Fat
Carries the flour's browning and helps it coat the starch so it thickens smoothly.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the fat. Flour that is stirred in raw can clump and leave a pasty taste. Cooking it in fat until lightly browned coats the starch grains so they disperse evenly and thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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