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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made from ox tail, butter, onion, carrot, celery, and kitchen bouquet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the ox-tail

  1. Cut the ox-tail at each joint and fry in butter for five minutes.

  2. Remove the meat and place it in a warmed soup kettle.

  3. Fry the sliced onion in the remaining fat.

  4. Add the fried onion to the ox-tail.

  5. Rinse the frying pan with hot water and add the rinsed pan to the soup kettle.

Simmer

  1. Cover with cold water.

  2. Add the sliced carrot and minced celery.

  3. Cover closely and simmer for five hours.

  4. Season to taste and set aside until the next day.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the fat and strain the liquid from the meat and vegetables.

  2. Pick out the best joints and return them to the soup.

  3. Heat to a fast boil and skim.

  4. Add kitchen bouquet to taste.

  5. 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + carrottop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ox-tail
Releases gelatin and meaty flavour into the broth during long simmering.
Butter or good dripping
Fat that browns the ox-tail and builds savoury flavour before simmering.
Onion
Browns in the fat to add sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and body to the broth as it simmers.
Celery
Contributes aromatic savoury flavour to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmer closely covered for five hours. A gentle, covered simmer slowly extracts collagen and flavour from the ox-tail without evaporating too much liquid or turning the broth cloudy. Boiling hard would make it cloudy and greasy.

Swap the onion

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

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

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