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Oxtail Soup

A hearty soup made with oxtail, vegetables, stock, and seasonings, finished with cream and served with fried croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 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 ↓

Oxtail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oxtail

  1. Cut the oxtail into joints and remove all fat.

  2. Sprinkle the oxtail with flour.

  3. Heat the dripping or butter in a pot and fry the oxtail quickly.

Make the stock

  1. In the same pot, fry the sliced onion until soft.

  2. Heat the stock, then add the oxtail, onion, sliced vegetables, herbs, and cloves.

  3. Simmer gently for 3 hours, then strain the soup and keep the pieces of oxtail.

Add the beetroot and vegetables

  1. Mix ½ oz cornflour with cold water and stir into the boiling stock, seasoning well.

  2. Boil the stock, then add the small joints of oxtail and meat from the larger pieces.

  3. In a separate pan, cook the sliced beetroots and onions in melted butter without browning.

  4. Add the cooked vegetables to the stock and herbs, and simmer gently for 2 hours.

  5. Rub the vegetables through a fine sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Mix rice flour with milk, add to the soup, and stir until boiling; cook for 5 minutes and season well.

  2. Add cochineal for color and stir in cream before serving.

  3. Serve with fried 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 + 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Oxtail
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, giving the meat tenderness and the soup body.
Cornflour
Starch swells when boiled in stock, thickening the soup.
Rice flour
Starch swells when boiled with the milk, adding further thickness to the soup.
Beetroot
Gives the soup its red color and an earthy sweetness.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, fuller mouthfeel at the end.

The step that matters

Thickening with cornflour. Mix the cornflour with cold water before stirring it in so it disperses without lumps. Starch thickens only when the liquid reaches a boil, so keep the stock boiling as it thickens.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, turnip, celery, clove, pepper, sherry):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, turnip, celery, clove, pepper, sherry. 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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