Name: Ox-tail
Ingredients: 1 oxtail; good clear second stock; consomme stock; small button onions; roots for saute soup (e.g., carrots, turnips)

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox-tail

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the oxtail into joints; your butcher can do this.
Blanch the joints in water for a few minutes.
Add the blanched oxtail to a pot with good clear second stock and gently boil until tender.
Skim off all grease from the surface.
Add sufficient consomme stock and the same roots as for saute soup, cut to size.
Use small button onions instead of cut onions.
Season to taste.
Carefully place the oxtail pieces into a soup tureen using a large spoon to avoid smashing them.

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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).