Skip to main content
Main

Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, vegetables, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Ask your butcher to divide the ox-tails at the joints and soak them in warm water with salt.

  2. Chop the celery, carrots, turnips, and onions; gather the savory herbs and peppercorns.

  3. In a soup kettle, combine the ox-tails, butter, vegetables, and cold water. Stir over heat until the pan is glazed.

Simmer and thicken

  1. Add the 3 quarts of water, skim well, and simmer slowly for 4 hours or until the tails are tender.

  2. Remove the ox-tails, strain the soup, and stir in a little flour to thicken.

  3. Add the port wine and the boiled celery pieces to the strained soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the pieces of ox-tail to the kettle and boil for a few minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Ox-tails
Provide the meat and gelatinous body that enriches the broth as they simmer.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while the vegetables and ox-tails are glazed in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the strained soup so it has a fuller, more body-rich texture.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the finished soup.
Onions
Build the aromatic base of the soup as they cook down into the broth.

The step that matters

Stir over heat until the pan is glazed. Browning the ox-tails and vegetables in fat builds deep, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Stirring keeps them from scorching while they colour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, port wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, 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

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipes