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Oxtail Soup

A hearty soup made with oxtails, vegetables, and seasonings, thickened with browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the beef stock, oxtails, onions, carrots, turnip, celery, and parsley.

  2. Boil the mixture until the oxtails are tender.

  3. Strain the soup to remove solids.

  4. Thicken the soup with browned flour, stirring until smooth.

Finish and serve

  1. Add finely chopped vegetables and meat from the oxtails.

  2. Stir in catsup, Worcestershire sauce, port wine, and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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

Oxtails
Release gelatin and meaty flavor into the broth as they simmer until tender.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.
Port wine
Adds depth and a touch of sweetness to the finished soup.
Onions
Build savory sweetness and aromatic base flavor as they cook down.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with browned flour. Flour must be stirred in gradually and kept moving so it disperses without lumps; added in one clump it stays raw-tasting and grainy instead of giving smooth, even body.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, beef, flour, sauce. 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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