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Simple Oxtail Sotjp

A simple oxtail soup simmered for three hours with butter, stock, onion, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Simple Oxtail Sotjp

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oxtail

  1. Cut the oxtail across at each joint and trim away the fat.

  2. Place the oxtail in a saucepan with cold water to blanch and bring to a boil.

  3. Strain the water and wipe the joints.

  4. Heat the butter in a pan and fry the oxtail until brown.

  5. Drain the butter, then add the stock or water, onion, salt, and pepper.

Simmer and finish

  1. Bring to a boil, skim, and simmer gently for three hours.

  2. Strain the soup and let it cool to remove all fat.

  3. Return the soup to the saucepan, bring to a boil, and serve with small joints of oxtail or add sago or vermicelli and cook until clear.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Oxtail
Provides the meat and collagen-rich joints that give the soup its body and savour during long simmering.
Butter
Fat used to fry the oxtail, browning its surface and adding roasted flavour to the broth.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Skim and cool the soup to remove fat. Fat that is not removed floats on the broth and makes it greasy. Chilling the strained soup lets the fat solidify on the surface so it can be lifted off cleanly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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