Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the base
Slice the pork.
Fry the sliced pork in a large pot until the fat covers the bottom.
Add the sliced large onion and fry until browned.
Add the cut ox-tails and cook for 5 minutes.
Transfer the ox-tails to a soup pot with the fried onion and water.
Simmer the soup
Cover the soup and cook slowly for 2 hours.
Add the carrots, herbs, and clove-stuck onion.
Stew for another 2 hours.
Strain the soup.
Pulp the vegetables.
Finish and store
Cool the soup and remove the fat.
Season the soup.
Reheat the soup until it simmers.
Stir in the melted butter mixed with browned flour to form a paste.
Boil once.
Place the remnants of the tails in a jar or bowl and add half of the soup to the remnants.
Refrigerate the soup for tomorrow.
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.
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Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together9,057 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
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Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together4,108 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
-
Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together4,563 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
-
Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,873 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-tails
- Give the soup its rich meaty flavour and body as they simmer for hours.
- Pork fat
- Fat from the salt pork adds savoury richness and carries flavour in the frying step.
- Onion
- Browning the sliced onion adds sweetness and depth to the soup base.
- Carrots
- Add natural sweetness and body when pulped into the soup.
- Browned flour
- Thickens the soup, giving it a smoother, more velvety body.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat that rounds out the flavour of the finished soup.
The step that matters
Stirring the butter and browned flour into the hot soup. Flour clumps if added dry or to a fully boiling liquid. Mixing it first into a smooth paste with melted butter lets it disperse evenly and thicken without lumps.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (thyme, parsley, carrot, pork, clove, flour, butter):
- Parsnipfits better
- Shallotfits better
- Turnipfits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against thyme, parsley, carrot, pork, clove, flour, butter. 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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