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Ox-tail Soup

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

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

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

  2. Melt the butter in a large pot and add the ox-tails.

  3. Slice the vegetables and add them along with the herbs.

Make the soup

  1. Add ½ cup of water and cook over high heat until the juices are released.

  2. Fill the pot with water and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the salt and skim the surface.

  4. Simmer gently for 4 hours, or until the tails are tender.

  5. Remove the tails, skim the soup, and strain it.

  6. Thicken the soup with flour and add the catsup.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the tails to the pot and simmer for 5 minutes.

  2. 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. 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
Provide meat and collagen that enrich the broth as they simmer for hours.
Butter
Adds fat to the pot, carrying flavour as the ox-tails and vegetables begin to brown.
Onions
Build savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften and release their sugars into the broth.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the broth as they cook down.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body to the broth during the long simmer.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the soup by swelling with liquid to give it body.

The step that matters

Skim the surface. Foam and fat rise to the top as the broth heats and simmers. Skimming removes impurities that would otherwise make the soup cloudy and greasy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

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