Skip to main content
Main

Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made from ox-tail, vegetables, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox-tail

  1. Wash the ox-tail pieces in cold water.

  2. Place the ox-tail in a pot and cover with fresh cold water. Bring the pot to a boil, then drain and dry the ox-tail.

  3. Roll the ox-tail in flour seasoned with salt and pepper.

Brown and simmer

  1. Heat the butter in a saucepan until smoking hot and brown the ox-tail. While the ox-tail is browning, peel and dice the carrot, turnip, and onion.

  2. Once the ox-tail is browned, add the diced vegetables, boiling water, and season with salt and pepper. Cover and boil the soup slowly for 3 hours.

  3. If the soup is not thick enough, add a little browned flour; if it is too thick, thin with boiling water. Adjust seasoning and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tail
Breaks down during long simmering, releasing gelatin and meaty flavor into the broth.
Butter
Browning fat that adds rich, toasty flavor to the ox-tail before simmering.
Flour
Coats the meat so it browns better, and browned flour can thicken the soup.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the broth as it softens during simmering.
Turnip
Softens during simmering, adding mild sweetness and body to the broth.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, building savory depth in the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the ox-tail in butter. Hot, dry meat browns through the Maillard reaction, creating deep savory flavor. Wet or crowded meat steams instead, leaving the broth flat and pale.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, carrot, turnip, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, carrot, turnip, 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes