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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tail, vegetables, and stock, simmered slowly and seasoned with salt, pepper, thyme, and bay leaf.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the ox-tail

  1. Cut the ox-tail into joints and fry in butter until browned.

  2. Remove the ox-tail and fry the onions and carrots in the same butter.

Simmer the soup

  1. Cover the vegetables with the stock and add the ox-tail, thyme, and bay leaf.

  2. Cook slowly for 4 hours.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then transfer to a covered bowl to cool.

Skim and serve

  1. After several hours, remove the layer of fat from the top.

  2. Warm the stock slightly and strain through a colander, reserving a few joints.

  3. Heat the soup to a boil, color with caramel, and serve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

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 gelatin that give the soup its body and rich flavor.
Butter
Carries the frying of the ox-tail and vegetables, adding browned, savory flavor.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth as it softens and browns in the fat.
Carrot
Contributes natural sweetness and body to the stock as it cooks slowly.
Weak stock
Forms the liquid base that the meat and vegetables slowly release flavor into.

The step that matters

Remove the layer of fat from the top. Fat that rises and cools on the surface can make the soup greasy and heavy, so it should be skimmed off before reheating.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, butter, pepper, parsley, thyme. 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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