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Oxtail Soup

A hearty soup made with oxtail, vegetables, stock, and thickened with cornflour, served with fried croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 336 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Oxtail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Cut the oxtail into joints and remove all fat.

  2. Sprinkle the oxtail with flour.

  3. Heat the dripping or butter in a pot and fry the oxtail quickly.

  4. Slice and fry the onion in the same pot.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the stock, then add the oxtail, onion, sliced vegetables, herbs, and cloves.

  2. Simmer gently for 3 hours, then strain and keep the pieces of oxtail.

  3. For thickening, mix 1 oz cornflour with cold water, stir into the boiling stock, and season well.

  4. Boil the stock and add the small joints of oxtail and meat from the larger pieces.

  5. For added flavor, stir in a wineglassful of sherry if desired.

  6. Clean and slice the beetroots and onions, then cook slowly in melted butter without browning.

  7. Add the stock and herbs, and simmer gently for 1 to 2 hours.

  8. Rub the vegetables through a fine sieve.

  9. Mix rice flour with milk, add to the soup, and stir until boiling. Cook for 5 minutes and season well.

Finish and serve

  1. Add cochineal for color and stir in cream before serving.

  2. Serve with fried croutons.

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. Turnip + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + beetroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together699 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Oxtail
Its collagen breaks down during long simmering, giving the soup body and a rich mouthfeel.
Cornflour
Starch swells in hot liquid and thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied soup.
Rice flour
Starch thickens the milk-enriched soup further once it is brought to a boil.
Dripping or butter
Fat carries flavor and, when fried, adds browned, savoury notes to the base.
Cream
Adds fat that softens the flavor and gives a smoother, richer texture.

The step that matters

Mixing the cornflour with cold water first. Starch added straight to hot liquid clumps as its outer layer swells before the granules disperse. Suspending it in cold water first lets it blend evenly, so the stock thickens smoothly.

Swap the beetroot

The recipe marks beetroot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, onion, butter, celery, clove, sherry):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, butter, celery, clove, sherry. 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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