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Another Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, water, cloves, onions, carrots, turnips, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Another Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the ox tails in a large pot with water, cloves, salt, and pepper.

  2. Boil for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the soup into an earthen pot.

  4. Let it cool overnight.

  5. Remove the fat from the surface.

Brown the vegetables and meat

  1. Chop the onions.

  2. Fry them in butter until golden brown.

  3. Cut the ox tails into pieces.

  4. Add them to the onions and fry until browned.

Finish the soup

  1. Chop the carrots and turnips.

  2. Add them to the soup along with the onion and ox-tail mixture.

  3. Simmer for 2 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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 meaty flavour into the broth as they cook slowly.
Onions
Caramelise when fried in butter, adding sweetness and depth to the soup.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body as they soften during simmering.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and earthy flavour, softening during the final simmer.
Butter
Fat for frying onions and meat, adding browning and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Remove the fat from the surface. After cooling overnight, fat solidifies on top of the broth. Removing it keeps the soup clean-tasting and prevents it from becoming greasy during the final simmer.

Swap the onion

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

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

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