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Ox Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tail, lean beef, vegetables, herbs, and a roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 tail

  1. Blanch the ox tail by covering it with cold water in a stewpan, bring to a boil, then remove and dry on a clean cloth.

  2. Joint the tail and trim any excess fat from the root end.

  3. Cut the beef and vegetables into thick slices.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the butter in a stewpan until smoking hot, then add the tail, beef, vegetables, herbs, and spices; fry for about 15 minutes with the lid on, shaking occasionally.

  2. Add the water and salt, bring to a boil, and skim thoroughly.

  3. Simmer gently for 4 to 5 hours until the tail is tender but not falling apart.

  4. Strain the soup through a fine sieve and let it cool; remove the fat.

Thicken and serve

  1. Heat 3 oz of the fat until smoking hot, stir in the flour, and fry until brown.

  2. Gradually add the soup to the flour mixture, stirring until it boils.

  3. Rinse the pieces of tail in warm water to remove any vegetable and fat, then heat them gently in the soup 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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tail
Gives the soup its body and rich meaty flavour as it simmers slowly.
Lean beef
Adds meaty flavour to the broth during the long simmer.
Flour
Browned in fat, it thickens the soup as it is added and boiled.
Butter
Fat for frying the aromatics, carrying flavour into the soup and browning the base.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook.
Onions
Browning in fat builds savoury depth and sweetness into the broth.

The step that matters

Frying the flour in fat. Cooking the flour in hot fat until brown develops nutty flavour and colour and removes raw starch taste. Adding the soup gradually and stirring keeps the mixture smooth without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, thyme, carrot, turnip, celery, clove. 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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