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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox-tail, shin beef, vegetables, herbs, and a flour-thickened stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Cut the beef into pieces.

  2. Place the beef in a pot with the cold water.

  3. Bring the mixture to a slow boil, then simmer for 2 hours.

Brown the ox-tail and onion

  1. Cut the ox-tail into joints and slice the onion.

  2. In a pan, fry the ox-tail in butter.

  3. Add the sliced onion to the pan and fry until golden.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add the fried ox-tail and onion to the pot with the remaining vegetables, herbs, and cloves.

  2. Let the soup simmer for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the stock and set aside the pieces of ox-tail.

  4. Skim the fat from the top of the stock and bring it to a boil.

Thicken and serve

  1. For each quart of stock, mix 1 tablespoon of flour or cornflour with a little cold water.

  2. Pour the boiling stock over the flour mixture, return to the pan, and stir until it boils.

  3. Add the ox-tail back into the soup and heat until hot.

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. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  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 + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tail
Collagen from the bones and connective tissue gives the soup body and a rich, silky mouthfeel.
Shin beef
Slow simmering breaks down its connective tissue, adding gelatin and deep meaty flavour to the stock.
Onions
Frying until golden adds sweetness and browned, savoury flavour to the soup.
Butter
Fat used for frying the ox-tail and onion, promoting browning and carrying flavour.
Flour or cornflour (in the method)
Starch swells in the hot stock, thickening the soup to a lightly bodied consistency.

The step that matters

Thickening the stock. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold water first, then whisked into boiling stock. Adding dry flour directly causes lumps, because starch clumps before it can disperse and swell evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, carrot, turnip, celery, sage, thyme. 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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