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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox-tails, gravy beef, ham bone, vegetables, herbs, and optional seasonings.

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

  1. Cut the ox-tails into joints.

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the ox-tails, gravy beef, ham bone, water, carrots, turnips, celery, onions, bread crust, sweet herbs, cloves, and peppercorns.

  2. Boil gently for several hours until the ox-tails are tender.

  3. Remove the ox-tails and let the beef and vegetables boil for an additional 4 hours.

  4. Strain the broth and remove the fat as you would for clear gravy soup.

Finish the soup

  1. If not using ham bones, add ketchup or prepared sauces, wine, and cayenne to taste.

  2. Return the ox-tails to the pot along with cut pieces of carrot and turnip.

  3. For a thicker soup, thicken the broth with brown roux before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tails
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, giving the broth body and tender meat.
Gravy beef
Slow simmering releases its flavour and gelatin into the broth, enriching the soup.
Ham bone
Adds savoury, smoky depth and gelatin to the broth during long simmering.
Brown roux
Flour and fat cooked together thicken the broth, giving it a smooth, fuller texture.

The step that matters

Removing the fat from the broth. Fat rises and floats on hot broth and can make the soup greasy. Straining and skimming it off once the broth is strained gives a clean, clear result.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, bread. 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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