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Ox-tail Soup

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the ham and butter in the bottom of a stewpan.

  2. Break the bones of the ox cheek, wash it clean, and add it to the stewpan.

  3. Chop the vegetables, omitting 1 head of celery, and add them to the stewpan.

  4. Set the mixture over low heat for 30 minutes.

  5. Add the water and simmer gently until reduced to 4 quarts.

  6. Remove the meat from the cheek and strain the soup into a clean stewpan.

  7. Thicken the soup with flour and add the sliced head of celery.

  8. Simmer until the celery is tender, adding browning for color if needed.

  9. Cut the meat into small pieces, pour the soup over it, and serve with the crust of a French roll.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, pepper, ham, butter, celery):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, pepper, ham, butter, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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