Skip to main content
Main

Ox Tail Soup

A hearty soup made from ox tails simmered with cloves, onions, allspice, black pepper, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ox Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Soak the ox tails in warm water.

  2. In a gallon stewpan, combine the cloves, onions, allspice, black pepper, and the ox tails, then cover with cold water.

  3. Skim the surface often and let simmer gently for 2 hours until the meat is tender and separates from the bones.

  4. Remove the meat, cut it off the bones, and skim the broth.

  5. Strain the broth through a sieve.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a clean stewpan, mix the fat and enough flour to make a paste, stirring well over heat.

  2. Slowly pour in the broth while stirring, then let it simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Skim and strain through a sieve again.

  4. Add the meat back in, along with the mushroom catsup, wine, and season with salt.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

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 collagen that give the broth body and richness as they simmer.
Flour
Thickens the broth when cooked with fat into a paste and stirred into the liquid.
Fat from broth
Carries flavor and, combined with flour, forms the roux that thickens the soup.
Onions
Add savory aromatic depth to the broth during the long simmer.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the finished soup.

The step that matters

Simmering the broth gently. A rolling boil makes the broth cloudy and greasy, while gentle simmering with regular skimming keeps it clear and well flavored. Skimming removes impurities that rise to the surface.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, allspice, pepper, flour, butter, mushroom, wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, pepper, flour, butter, mushroom, 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

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes