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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, vegetables, tomatoes, and thickened with brown flour, flavored with sherry or Madeira and catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, brown the ox-tails over heat without water.

  2. Pour in 5 quarts of water and add turnip, onion, celery, parsley, leek, whole pepper, cloves, and tomatoes.

  3. Boil for 3 hours.

  4. Meanwhile, brown the flour in the oven or on the stove.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup, removing the grease, and thicken with the brown flour.

  2. Add Sherry or Madeira and catsup, then season with salt to taste.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 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
Release meat flavour and gelatin into the broth during long simmering.
Flour
Browned flour thickens the soup and adds a toasty, nutty flavour.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the broth.
Sherry or madeira
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the finished soup.
Catsup
Adds sweetness, acidity and deeper colour to the broth.

The step that matters

Brown the flour. Flour browned too little adds raw, pasty taste and thickens weakly, while overbrowned flour turns bitter and dark. Browning it gently and evenly gives a nutty flavour and a smooth thickening power when stirred into the hot soup.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, onion, celery, parsley, leek, pepper, clove):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, onion, celery, parsley, leek, pepper, clove. 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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