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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tail, butter, flour, onions, shallot, peppercorns, herbs, water, carrot, turnip, celery, cloves, salt, and Bovril.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Cut the ox tail into pieces.

  2. Fry the pieces in the butter until browned.

Make the soup

  1. Add the chopped onions, shallot, peppercorns, herbs, salt, water, and Bovril.

  2. Allow the soup to boil for three hours.

Thicken and strain

  1. Melt 2 oz. of butter in a clean saucepan.

  2. Add 2 oz. of flour and fry until brown.

  3. Add the browned flour mixture to the soup.

  4. Bring the soup to a boil.

  5. 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 + celerytop 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. Shallot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together202 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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 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
Gives the soup its main meaty body and rich flavour as it simmers for hours.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and browns the meat and flour for colour and depth.
Flour
Browned in butter to form a roux that thickens the soup and adds toasty colour.
Onions
Soften and sweeten during cooking, building savoury base flavour.
Bovril
Adds concentrated savoury, salty depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. Flour must cook in the butter until brown, not just warm. Cooking removes its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly. Stir constantly, because it can scorch quickly and turn bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, shallot, carrot, turnip, celery, clove):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, shallot, carrot, turnip, celery, clove. 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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