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Oxtail Soup

A soup made from oxtail, butter, flour, red currant jelly, anchovy vinegar, Madeira, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and pepper work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 267 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Oxtail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Strain the soup.

  2. Save all the tail joints.

  3. Pick the meat from the tail.

  4. Pound the meat in a mortar.

  5. Pass the paste through a sieve.

  6. Skim the fat off the soup.

Make the soup

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in flour.

  3. Gradually add the soup and paste.

  4. Bring the puree to a boil until thickened.

  5. Add red currant jelly.

  6. Add anchovy vinegar.

  7. Add Madeira.

  8. Stir vigorously for one minute 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. Red currant + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Red currant + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Oxtail
Provides the meat, bones and gelatin that give the soup its body and flavour.
Butter
Carries flavour and enriches the soup as the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup with the butter as a roux, giving it body.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity that balances the rich meat.
Madeira
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Bring the puree to a boil until thickened. Flour thickens only when its starch is heated enough to swell and set. Boiling the puree fully ensures the soup thickens evenly, while stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, anchovy, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, anchovy, vinegar, 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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