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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tail, vegetables, herbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 thoroughly and place it in a kettle of cold water, then bring to a boil.

  2. Remove the ox-tail and dry it on a towel.

Brown and simmer

  1. In a saucepan, fry the ox-tail in butter or drippings until browned.

  2. Add flour to the saucepan and stir well.

  3. Cover the mixture with water and add the diced carrot, turnip, potato, and the onion with cloves.

  4. Add the bouquet of herbs and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Cook slowly for 2 hours.

  6. Remove the onion and bouquet 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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  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-tail
Provides the meat and rich flavour that form the body of the soup during long simmering.
Butter or drippings
Fat that browns the ox-tail, building deeper savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly as it cooks into the liquid.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the broth as it softens.
Potato
Softens during cooking, adding starch that thickens the soup.

The step that matters

Browning the ox-tail. Frying the dried ox-tail until browned creates savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pieces that are wet will steam rather than brown, so drying them first matters.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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