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Oxtail Soup

A hearty soup made with oxtail, ham, carrots, turnip, onions, celery seed, flour, butter, herbs, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 base

  1. In a saucepan, combine the prepared vegetables, dried herbs, and half the butter. Fry for about 10 minutes.

  2. Add the water and seasonings, then simmer for 2 hours.

Make the roux

  1. In another pan, melt the remaining butter and slowly stir in the flour. Cook for a few minutes.

Combine and serve

  1. Strain the contents of the first saucepan into the second pan with the flour mixture.

  2. Add the contents of the tin of oxtail and the diced ham. Heat thoroughly.

  3. Adjust seasoning if necessary, and the soup is ready to 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. 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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 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

Flour
Thickens the butter and stock mixture into a smooth, body-rich soup.
Butter
Carries the frying of the vegetables and forms the base for the flour thickener.
Oxtail
Contributes meaty flavour and richness to the broth during the long simmer.
Onions
Soften and sweeten while frying, adding savoury depth to the soup.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the vegetable base.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter. Cooking the flour in melted butter for a few minutes removes its raw taste and lets it thicken smoothly when the liquid is added, so the soup does not turn lumpy or pasty.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, turnip, celery, flour, butter, pepper. 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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