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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, water, salt, onion, carrot, and tomatoes, simmered and chilled overnight.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,606 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Wash the ox tails and place them in a kettle with 1 gallon of cold water and a little coarse sea salt.

  2. Skim off the broth as it cooks.

  3. Once the meat is well cooked, remove the bones.

Add vegetables and chill

  1. Add the chopped onion, carrot, and tomatoes.

  2. For best flavor, refrigerate overnight to allow the fat to solidify on top.

Finish the soup

  1. The next day, remove the fat and boil the soup for an additional 1½ hours.

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 + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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 tails
Release collagen and gelatin into the broth, giving body and a rich mouthfeel as they cook.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as its sugars soften and mellow during simmering.
Carrot
Contributes natural sweetness and body to the broth as it softens.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and fresh flavor that brightens the rich, meaty broth.

The step that matters

Overnight chilling and fat removal. Cooling the soup lets the fat rise and solidify on top, where it can be lifted off cleanly. Removing it before reheating keeps the soup from tasting greasy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, tomato. 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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