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Ox-tail Soup a LA Jardiniere

A hearty soup made with ox tails, onion, carrots, celery, bay leaf, peppercorns, and water, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 a LA Jardiniere

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Cut the ox tails into pieces.

  2. In a large pot, combine the ox tails, onion, carrots, celery, bay leaf, and peppercorns.

  3. Add water and bring to a boil.

Simmer and serve

  1. Reduce heat and simmer for 3-4 hours until the meat is tender.

  2. Remove the tails, strain the broth, and season with salt.

  3. Serve 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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tails
Provide the meat and collagen-rich connective tissue that become tender and flavour the broth during long simmering.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the broth as it cooks.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the soup.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the meat is tender. A rolling boil toughens meat proteins and makes the broth cloudy, while a gentle simmer lets connective tissue slowly break down into gelatin, giving tender meat and a richer broth.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery. 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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