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Ox Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tail pieces simmered with butter, herbs, and vegetables.

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

Prepare the broth

  1. Melt the butter in a large stewpan.

  2. Add the ox tail pieces and cook until they turn yellow.

  3. Cover with water and add the herbs and vegetables.

  4. Set on low heat for 20 minutes.

Simmer and serve

  1. Increase the heat until boiling, then skim the surface.

  2. Boil gently until the meat falls off the bones.

  3. Strain the broth and serve over croutons.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 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 gelatin and meaty flavor into the broth as they simmer, giving body to the soup.
Butter
Browns the ox tail pieces and carries flavor from the searing into the broth.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften and dissolve into the broth.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the meat falls off the bones. A rolling boil emulsifies fat into the broth and toughens the meat; a gentle simmer lets collagen slowly break down into gelatin, which gives the soup body and tender meat.

Swap the onion

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

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

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