Skip to main content
Main

Another Ox-tail Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Another Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the ox-tails in a large pot with water, cloves, salt, and pepper. Boil for 3 hours.

  2. Strain the soup into an earthen pot and let it sit overnight to cool.

  3. Remove the fat from the surface of the soup.

Brown and finish

  1. Chop the onions and fry them in butter until golden.

  2. Cut the ox-tails into pieces and add them to the pan with the onions. Fry until browned.

  3. Chop the carrots, turnips, and cabbage. Add them to the soup along with the onion and ox-tail mixture.

  4. Boil the soup for an additional 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. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 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
Release gelatin and meat flavour into the broth during long simmering, giving body and richness.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweet, savoury depth that flavours the finished soup.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body as they soften during the long simmer.
Turnips
Soften during simmering, adding mild sweetness and earthy flavour to the soup.
White cabbage
Softens during simmering, adding vegetable body and a mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Removing the fat after overnight cooling. Fat that is not skimmed from the chilled broth stays as a greasy layer in the finished soup. Once solidified, it lifts off cleanly, so removing it before reheating gives a clearer, lighter result.

Swap the clove

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

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

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

More ox tail soup recipes

Clear 5 See all 157 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipes