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Ox-Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tail, ham bone, vegetables, herbs, and thickened with flour, port wine, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Ox-Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Fry the ox tail pieces in butter until browned, then drain.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine the ox tail, ham bone, carrots, onion, celery, herbs, mace, cloves, and peppercorns.

  2. Cover with water, bring to a boil, and skim off any scum.

  3. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer gently until the tail is tender.

  4. Remove the meat, strain and skim the soup, then return it to the stewpan.

  5. Thicken the soup with flour, then stir in the port wine and mushroom ketchup.

  6. Add the meat back into the soup and simmer for a few more minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen with toast or 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tail
Its collagen-rich connective tissue softens during long simmering, giving the soup body and tender meat.
Butter
Browning the ox tail in butter builds roasted, savoury flavour before the soup is made.
Flour
Starch thickens the soup, giving it a fuller, smoother body.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the finished soup.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the soup.

The step that matters

Skim the scum after boiling. Scum rising during the first boil contains impurities and proteins that can make the soup cloudy and taste muddy. Skimming it keeps the broth clearer and cleaner in flavour.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, carrot, onion, celery, clove, flour. 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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