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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with oxtails, cloves, onions, allspice, black pepper, wine, mushroom ketchup, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Soak the oxtails in warm water while preparing the vegetables.

  2. In a large stew pan, combine the oxtails, cloves, onions, allspice, black pepper, and cold water.

  3. Skim off any scum that rises.

  4. Cover the pot.

  5. Simmer gently for about 2 hours until the meat is tender.

Prepare the meat and broth

  1. Remove the meat from the bones.

  2. Cut the meat into bite-sized pieces.

  3. Skim the broth.

  4. Strain it through a sieve.

Thicken and finish

  1. Heat the fat in a clean stew pan.

  2. Add flour to make a paste.

  3. Gradually stir in the broth.

  4. Let it simmer for another 30 minutes.

  5. Skim until smooth.

  6. Strain again.

  7. Add the meat back into the soup.

  8. Add mushroom ketchup and wine.

  9. Season with salt.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Oxtails
Provide the meat and gelatin that give the soup its body and richness.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, lightly bodied soup as it cooks.
Fat from the broth
Carries flavor and helps the flour form a smooth paste for thickening.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they cook into the broth.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to balance the rich broth.

The step that matters

Making the flour paste and stirring in the broth. Flour added to hot fat must be cooked into a smooth paste before liquid is added gradually. Adding broth too fast or with flour lumps leaves the soup grainy and uneven, so stir steadily as the broth goes in.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, allspice, pepper, flour, mushroom, ketchup, wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, pepper, flour, mushroom, ketchup, wine. 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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