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Oxtail Soup

A hearty soup made with oxtail, carrots, onion, herbs, and stock, thickened with browned flour and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

Oxtail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the oxtail into joints.

  2. Fry the oxtail in good dripping.

  3. Slice the vegetables.

Make the soup

  1. Add the sliced vegetables and herbs to the skimmed and strained stock.

  2. Add the oxtail to the stock.

  3. Simmer gently for 4 hours.

  4. Carefully remove the oxtail pieces.

  5. Strain the soup.

  6. Season the soup with pepper and salt.

  7. Add ketchup.

  8. Thicken the soup with browned flour mixed with cold water.

  9. Return the oxtail pieces to the soup.

  10. Simmer for 5-10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 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

Oxtail
Provides the meat and gelatin that give the soup its body and rich flavour.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavour of the other ingredients.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty depth of colour and flavour.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the soup as they soften during simmering.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and sweetness as it cooks into the stock.
Ketchup
Adds acidity and a sweet-tangy note that rounds out the seasoning.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with browned flour mixed with cold water. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold water before it goes into hot liquid, otherwise it clumps. Stirring it in and simmering lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the soup without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, thyme, parsley, pepper, flour, 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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