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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, ham, vegetables, herbs, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tails

  1. Cut the ox-tails into pieces at the joints and wash them.

  2. In a large stewpan, melt the butter and add the ox-tails.

Make the soup

  1. Slice the vegetables and add them to the stewpan along with the peppercorns and herbs.

  2. Add ½ pint of water and stir over high heat until the juices are released.

  3. Fill the stewpan with the remaining water and bring to a boil, then add the salt.

  4. Skim the surface and simmer gently for 4 hours, or until the tails are tender.

  5. Remove the tails, skim and strain the soup, then thicken with flour.

  6. Stir in the ketchup and port wine, return the tails to the pot, and simmer for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 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
Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue, giving the soup body and rich flavour.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and browns the tails before the liquid goes in.
Onions
Sweet aromatic base that adds depth of flavour to the broth.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and a fruity, rounded aroma to the finished soup.
Ketchup
Adds tangy acidity and a savoury, sweet-tart note to the soup.

The step that matters

Skim the surface during the simmer. Skimming removes the foam and fat that rise as proteins coagulate, keeping the broth clear and free of greasy, bitter off-flavours.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, carrot, turnip, onion, leek, 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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