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Oxtail Soup

A hearty soup made with oxtails, vegetables, and seasonings simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Oxtail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the oxtails at the joints.

  2. Slice the vegetables.

  3. Mince the pork.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, fry the pork and onion for a short time.

  2. Transfer the oxtails and fried onions to a soup kettle with 4 quarts of cold water.

  3. Let it simmer for about 4 hours.

  4. Add the remaining vegetables, cloves, pepper, and salt.

  5. Once the vegetables are well cooked, strain the soup.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Oxtails
Release gelatin and meaty flavor into the broth during long simmering.
Pork
Adds richness and savory depth to the broth when fried first.
Onion
Frying builds sweetness and savory flavor that carries into the soup.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body as they soften in the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering the oxtails. The long, gentle simmer is what draws collagen out of the oxtail joints and turns it into gelatin, giving the soup body. A hard boil can cloud the broth and toughen the meat, so keep it at a slow simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, parsley, pork, clove, pepper):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, parsley, pork, clove, pepper. 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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