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Ox-Tail Soup

A soup made with ox-tails, stock, cloves, peppercorns, salt, carrot, and turnip.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox-Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the ox-tails into 2-inch pieces and wash them in cold water.

Make the soup

  1. Combine the ox-tails and stock in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Skim the surface, add the salt, peppercorns, and cloves in a muslin bag, then reduce heat and simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Dice the carrot and turnip, add them to the soup, and cook for an additional 30 minutes.

  4. Remove the cloves and peppercorns before serving 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Clove + turniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 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 flavour into the stock during long simmering.
Second stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the soup as it cooks.
Turnip
Adds mild earthy flavour and body to the soup as it cooks.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, 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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