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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox-tail, lean beef, carrots, onions, thyme, and browned flour, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,563 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and vegetables

  1. Cut the ox-tail into several pieces and fry them brown in butter.

  2. Slice the onions and carrots, then brown them in the same pan after removing the ox-tail.

  3. Tie the browned onions, carrots, and thyme in a bag and drop it into a soup pot.

  4. Add the pieces of ox-tail and the sliced beef to the pot.

Simmer and finish

  1. Grate the two whole carrots over the meat and add 4 quarts of cold water, along with pepper and salt.

  2. Boil for 4 to 6 hours, depending on the size of the tail.

  3. Strain the soup 15 minutes before serving and thicken it with 2 tablespoons of browned flour.

  4. Boil for an additional 10 minutes.

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 + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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-tail
Gives the soup its rich, meaty flavour as it simmers for hours.
Lean beef
Adds more meat flavour and body to the broth during the long simmer.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook down.
Onions
Browning them adds depth and savoury sweetness to the soup base.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the ox-tail and vegetables. Frying the meat and vegetables until deep brown triggers the Maillard reaction, which creates the roasted, savoury flavours the finished broth depends on. Pale searing gives a flat, weak soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, thyme, butter, pepper, flour. 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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