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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty broth made from ox tails, vegetables, and seasonings, 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 parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox-tails

  1. Wash and unjoint the ox-tails, cracking the bones if possible.

  2. In a stew-pan, heat the minced pork, then add the sliced onion and brown it.

  3. Fry the ox-tails in the fat until slightly browned, then place them in a soup kettle with the water.

Simmer the soup

  1. Simmer for 4 hours, then add the sliced vegetables.

  2. When the vegetables are very tender, strain the soup.

  3. Select a few joints of meat for each plate, trim them nicely, and set aside.

Finish and serve

  1. The next day, remove the fat from the soup, season with salt, pepper, and ketchup or Worcestershire sauce as preferred.

  2. Return the reserved joints to the soup and heat when ready to 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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 during long simmering, giving body.
Pork
Adds rendered fat for frying and savoury depth to the soup base.
Onion
Browning in the fat builds sweetness and savoury aroma in the soup.
Carrots
Soften during simmering, adding sweetness and body to the broth.
Celery
Softens during simmering, adding aromatic flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer the soup. A long, gentle simmer lets collagen in the ox-tails break down into gelatin, giving the broth body. A hard boil makes the soup cloudy and greasy, so keep it at a bare simmer.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, parsley, pork, clove, pepper. 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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