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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox-tail, vegetables, and stock, finished with sherry and cornflour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox-tail

  1. Cut the ox-tail into small joints and place them in a stewpan covered with cold water, then bring to a boil and strain.

  2. Dry the pieces of ox-tail and roll them in flour.

Brown and simmer

  1. Add them to the stewpan with the ham, vegetables, and butter, and fry until browned.

  2. Add the stock, herbs, peppercorns, cloves, and salt, boil and skim well.

  3. Cover and cook gently for about 4 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup, remove the fat and return it to the stewpan.

  2. When boiling, add the sherry and cornflour mixed smoothly, then stir and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Serve the smaller pieces of ox-tail in the soup.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 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 rich meat flavour and body as its collagen breaks down during long gentle cooking.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and helps brown the floured ox-tail and vegetables.
Cornflour
Starch that thickens the strained soup into a smooth, lightly body-rich liquid.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that brightens the rich, long-simmered broth.
Onions
Build sweetness and savoury depth as they soften and brown in the fat.

The step that matters

Fry the floured ox-tail until browned. Browning drives Maillard reactions that create deeper, roasted flavours. Pale frying produces a flatter, greyer broth, so the pieces should be well coloured before stock is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, butter, ham, parsley, thyme):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, butter, ham, parsley, thyme. 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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