Skip to main content
Main

Ox-tail Soup

A hearty broth made from ox tails, vegetables, and pork, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Cut the ox-tails at the joints, slice the vegetables, and mince the pork.

Brown and simmer

  1. Heat the pork in a stew-pan. When hot, add the onions; when they begin to color, add the ox-tails.

  2. Fry the ox-tails for a short time, cutting them to the bone to release the juice.

  3. Transfer the ox-tails and fried onions to a soup kettle with 4 quarts of cold water.

  4. Let the mixture simmer for about 4 hours.

  5. Add the remaining vegetables, cloves stuck in a piece of onion, pepper, and salt.

Strain and serve

  1. Once the vegetables are well cooked, strain the soup.

  2. Select some of the joints (one for each plate), trim them, and serve with the soup, or leave the joints out if preferred.

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 juice and gelatin into the broth, giving body and rich flavor during long simmering.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding savory depth to the broth.
Pork
Adds meaty richness and fat to the broth as it heats and cooks.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color to the broth as they cook down.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory flavor to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Fry the ox-tails briefly before simmering. Browning the surface and cutting to the bone helps develop flavor through the Maillard reaction and lets juices and marrow flavor reach the broth, so a short, hot fry matters more than a long one.

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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes