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Ox Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, vegetables, and seasonings simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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.

  2. Slice the vegetables.

  3. Mince the pork.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, fry the pork and onion with the ox tails for a short time.

  2. Transfer the ox tails and fried onions to a soup kettle and add 4 quarts of cold water.

  3. Let it simmer for about 4 hours.

  4. Add the remaining vegetables, cloves, pepper, and salt.

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

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
Slow simmering draws collagen and flavor from the bones into the broth, giving body.
Onion
Frying it adds browned, sweet savory flavor that carries into the soup.
Pork
Frying the minced pork adds fat and savory depth to the broth.
Carrots
Cooked slowly, they add sweetness and soften to give the soup body.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory flavor as it cooks into the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering the ox tails. A gentle simmer over about 4 hours lets collagen in the tails break down into gelatin, enriching the broth. A hard boil can make the broth cloudy and greasy.

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.

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