Skip to main content
Drink

Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, ham, onion, cloves, and optional port wine, catsup, and bay leaf.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and port wine work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 914 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dress and disjoint the ox-tails.

  2. In a pot, cover the ox-tails and ham with cold water.

  3. Cook slowly until done.

Flavor and finish

  1. Add the onion with cloves stuck in it and any vegetables you like.

  2. Cook for an additional 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the soup and serve.

  4. For extra flavor, add port wine, catsup, and a bay leaf if desired.

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. Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Ham + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Ham + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,666 recipes

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

  5. Onion + port winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,148 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 meat, collagen and body that gives the soup its rich flavor.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor to the broth during the long cooking.
Onion
Contributes sweetness and aroma as it softens and flavors the broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, clove, port wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, clove, port wine. 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

Wine WheyWine Whey111 recipesRaisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesEgg WineEgg Wine58 recipesElderberry WineElderberry Wine51 recipes