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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox-tail, stock, vegetables, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the ox-tail into 1.5-inch lengths and trim away the fat.

  2. Fry the pieces in a stewpan with a little dripping for 5 minutes until browned.

Make the soup

  1. Pour in 2 quarts of stock or water and bring to a boil.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of salt and skim the surface carefully.

  3. Add the carrot, turnip, onion, cloves, mace, herbs, peppercorns, and celery.

  4. Stew gently for 2.5 hours.

  5. Strain the stock and return the pieces of tail to the pot.

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

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

  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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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-tail
Gives rich meaty flavour and gelatin that thickens the stock as it stews.
Stock or water
Forms the liquid base in which the tail and vegetables slowly cook.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the soup as it simmers.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and earthy flavour to the broth.
Onion
Builds savoury depth as it softens and releases its flavour into the stock.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface after boiling. Proteins and fat rise as foam and scum when the stock first boils. Skimming them off keeps the soup clear and free of greasy, off-tasting residue during the long stew.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, onion, clove, parsley, celery):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

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