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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made from ox tails, vegetables, and herbs, thickened with arrowroot or rice flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash and soak the ox-tails.

  2. Pour 1 gallon of cold water over the tails and bring to a boil gradually.

  3. Add 1½ ounces of coarse sea salt and remove the scum as it forms.

  4. Once the scum ceases to rise, add the carrots, onions, savory herbs, celery, turnips, cloves, and peppercorns.

  5. Stew gently for 3 to 3½ hours, depending on the size of the tails.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the tails, strain the broth, and skim off the fat.

  2. Cut the meat from the tails and return it to the broth.

  3. When the broth begins to boil, stir in a thickening of arrowroot or rice flour mixed with cayenne and salt to taste.

  4. Serve the soup very 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. Turnip + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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 + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tails
Release gelatin and flavour into the broth during slow stewing, and provide the meat for the soup.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the broth from the start and helps draw out flavour from the meat and vegetables.
Arrowroot or rice flour
Thickens the broth to a light body when stirred in while it is hot.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as they stew.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they stew.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as the water heats. Removing it as it forms keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting, so it should be skimmed before the vegetables go in.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, turnip, clove, arrowroot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, turnip, clove, arrowroot. 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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