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Ox-Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, split peas, root vegetables, herbs, and spices, simmered until tender and optionally thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 soup base

  1. Clean the ox-tails.

  2. Place the cleaned ox-tails in a large pot with water.

  3. Simmer until the meat is tender.

  4. Let the soup cool and remove the fat.

Make the soup

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

  2. Simmer the vegetables until tender enough to puree 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 with a slice of bread.

  5. If the soup is not thick enough, add rice flour gradually.

Make the ragout

  1. For the ragout, cut the best parts of the ox head and tongue into small pieces.

  2. Season the ragout meat.

  3. Simmer the ragout meat in a quart of the reserved broth until tender.

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

  5. Boil the ragout together.

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 simmering breaks down connective tissue, releasing gelatin that gives the broth body and richness.
Split peas
Break down during simmering and puree through the sieve, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Potatoes
Soften and break down when pureed, adding starch that helps thicken the soup.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the soup as they soften and puree.
Onions
Contribute savory depth and sweetness as they cook down into the broth.

The step that matters

Removing the fat after cooling. Fat from the ox-tails rises and solidifies as the soup cools, so skimming it off before adding vegetables keeps the soup from tasting greasy.

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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