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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox-tail joints, vegetables, and herbs, simmered in stock or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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

  1. Sauté the ox-tail joints in butter until lightly browned.

  2. Add the beef stock or water and bring to a simmer.

  3. Season with whole black pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. If using water, add another ox-tail and some smaller pieces unsautéed.

  5. Add the sliced vegetables and herbs to the pot.

  6. Simmer until the meat is tender and loose from the bones.

  7. Thicken the soup with browned flour 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. 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
Give the soup its meaty body and rich flavour as they release gelatin and savoury juices while simmering.
Butter
Browns the ox-tail joints, adding a roasted, savoury aroma to the broth.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavour of the meat and vegetables.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a slightly nutty, toasted flavour.

The step that matters

Sauté the ox-tail joints until lightly browned. Browning creates savoury, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat added to the liquid yields a flatter, less aromatic broth, so the joints should be well coloured before liquid goes in.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beef, pepper, carrot, turnip, leek, celery):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, pepper, carrot, turnip, leek, celery. 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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