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Ox-Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, split peas, vegetables, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 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 the broth

  1. Clean the ox-tails.

  2. Soak the ox-tails in water.

  3. Stew the ox-tails in 5 to 6 quarts of water until tender.

  4. Let the soup cool.

  5. Remove the fat from the soup.

Make the soup

  1. Add the split peas, carrots, turnips, potatoes, onions, sweet herbs, and celery to the soup.

  2. Simmer until the vegetables are tender enough to pulp with the peas through a sieve.

  3. Season the soup with pepper, salt, mace, allspice, cloves, and cayenne.

  4. If the soup is not thick enough, boil it in a slice of bread and pulp it through a colander.

  5. Alternatively, add rice flour gradually.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the best parts of the head and tongue into small pieces.

  2. Season the pieces.

  3. Simmer them in a quart of the reserved broth.

  4. Add mushroom ketchup, walnut ketchup, soy sauce, port wine, and mustard.

  5. Boil before serving.

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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tails
Long stewing releases gelatin and meat flavor into the broth, giving body and richness.
Split peas
Break down during simmering and pulp through the sieve, thickening the soup.
Potatoes
Starch breaks down as they cook and pulp, adding body to the soup.
Carrots
Soften and pulp into the soup, adding sweetness and body.
Onions
Soften during simmering, adding savory sweetness to the base.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor at the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Thickening the soup. Starch from peas, potatoes and bread or rice flour thickens the soup as it cooks and pulps. Adding rice flour too quickly can form lumps, so add it gradually while stirring and let it simmer to thicken fully.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, carrot, turnip, potato, onion, celery, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, carrot, turnip, potato, onion, celery, pepper. 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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