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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox-tail, water, onion, carrots, celery, bay leaf, salt, pepper, and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

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-tail into pieces.

  2. Place the pieces in a large pot and cover with water.

Simmer

  1. Add the chopped onion, carrots, celery, salt, pepper, and bay leaf.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 3-4 hours.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup and serve hot, garnished with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 meaty flavour and body as it simmers for hours.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and a rounded background flavour to the broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic, slightly herbal flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering the ox-tail for 3-4 hours. Ox-tail is rich in connective tissue that must break down slowly at a gentle simmer. A hard boil can toughen the meat and cloud the broth, while too short a simmer leaves it chewy and the soup thin in flavour.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, pepper, parsley. 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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