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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, onions, spices, and ketchup, simmered slowly until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Basil and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,294 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tails

  1. Cut the ox tails into joints.

  2. Wash the joints in lukewarm water and dry them with a cloth.

  3. Dredge the joints with flour.

  4. Fry the tails in sweet dripping until light brown.

  5. Place the fried tails in a stew pan with warm water.

Make the onion base

  1. Slice the onions and dredge them with flour.

  2. Fry the onions until brown.

  3. Add hot water to the onions and mix well.

  4. Pour the onion mixture into the stew pan with the tails.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add allspice, black peppercorns, basil, and sliced carrot tied in muslin.

  2. Stir occasionally over low heat until boiling.

  3. Cover and simmer slowly for about 3 hours until the meat is tender.

  4. Remove the tails from the soup and strain the soup over them.

  5. Let the soup cool, preferably overnight.

  6. Remove the fat from the top of the soup.

  7. Cut the meat into pieces.

  8. Stir in salt, cayenne pepper, and ketchup.

  9. Return the mixture to the stew pan.

  10. Heat gently for about 30 minutes.

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. Basil + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Basil + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Allspice + basiltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together195 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tails
Provide the meat and collagen that become tender and give the soup its body during long simmering.
Flour
Coats the joints and onions so they brown well and slightly thicken the soup.
Sweet dripping
Fat for frying the tails, adding browning and rich flavour.
Onions
Browned onions add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aromatic body to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until the meat is tender. Gentle, long simmering breaks down collagen in the tails into gelatin, making the meat tender and the broth rich. A rapid boil toughens the meat and can cloud the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, allspice, basil, carrot, pepper, ketchup):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, allspice, basil, carrot, pepper, ketchup. 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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