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Ox Tail Soup

A soup made with ox tails, butter, water, pepper, sea salt, turnip, onion, carrot, tomatoes, and parsley.

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 ↓

Ox Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the ox tails into small pieces.

  2. Brown the pieces in a tablespoon of butter over medium heat.

  3. Add water and cook slowly until the tails are tender.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Add the minced turnip, onion, carrot, tomatoes, and parsley fifteen minutes before serving.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Ox tails
Provide the meat and rich flavor that form the base of the soup.
Butter
Browns the tail pieces, adding roasted, savory flavor through the Maillard reaction.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and body as it softens in the broth.
Onion
Adds savory depth and sweetness as it cooks into the broth.
Carrot
Contributes natural sweetness and color to the soup.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and fresh flavor that brightens the rich broth.

The step that matters

Cook the tails slowly until tender. Ox tail is rich in collagen, which needs long, gentle simmering to break down into gelatin. Cooking too fast or too briefly leaves the meat tough and the broth thin.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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