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Clear Oxtail

A clear broth made from oxtail, shin of beef, celery, mace, white pepper, carrot, onion, and salt, garnished with carrot and turnip.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Clear Oxtail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Joint, trim, and blanch the oxtail.

  2. Combine with the shin of beef and water in a pot.

  3. Simmer for five to six hours.

Clear and finish

  1. When cold, remove the fat from the surface.

  2. Clear the broth as you would for consommé.

  3. Strain the broth.

  4. Add the garnish of small rounds of carrot and turnip.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Releases gelatin and meat flavour into the water during the long simmer, giving body to the broth.
Oxtail
Adds rich beefy flavour and gelatin to the broth during the long simmer.
Lean beef
Provides lean meat that, with the egg white, gathers impurities when clearing the broth.
White egg and shell
Egg white and crushed shell trap fine particles as they set, clearing the broth.

The step that matters

Clear the broth as you would for consommé. Clarifying works by letting the egg white and meat form a raft that traps cloudy particles. If the broth boils hard, the raft breaks apart and the broth turns cloudy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, celery, mace, carrot, onion, egg, turnip):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, mace, carrot, onion, egg, turnip. 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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