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Oxtail Soup

A soup made with oxtail, brown stock, carrots, celery, onion, turnip, salt, pepper, Madeira wine, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Oxtail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oxtail

  1. Dredge the oxtail in flour and fry in butter until nicely browned.

Make the soup

  1. Add the oxtail to the brown stock and simmer for two hours.

  2. Parboil the diced vegetables for ten minutes, drain, and add them to the stock.

  3. Cook until the vegetables are tender, then add salt, pepper, wine, Worcestershire sauce, and lemon juice.

  4. Let it cook for ten minutes 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oxtail
Provides the main meat and rich flavor as it simmers into the stock.
Flour
Coats the oxtail so it browns well and gives a slightly thickened surface.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the meat's flavor through the soup.
Madeira wine
Adds a sweet, fortified depth of flavor to the finished soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savory broth.

The step that matters

Browning the oxtail. Frying the floured oxtail in butter until deeply browned drives the Maillard reaction, which builds the roasted, savory flavor the broth depends on. Pale meat gives a flatter soup.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, onion, turnip, pepper, madeira wine, sauce):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Cherryfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, onion, turnip, pepper, madeira wine, sauce. 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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