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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made from ox tails, cloves, onions, spices, and mushroom ketchup, thickened with flour and fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Ask the butcher to divide the ox tails at the joints and soak them in warm water.

  2. In a large stew pan, combine the ox tails, cloves, onions, allspice, black pepper, and cover with cold water.

  3. Skim off any scum that rises, then cover the pot and simmer gently for about 2 hours until the meat is tender.

  4. Remove the meat from the bones and cut it into bite-sized pieces.

  5. Skim the broth and strain it through a sieve.

Thicken and finish

  1. For a thickened soup, mix the fat with enough flour to make a paste in a clean stew pan over heat.

  2. Gradually add the broth to the paste, stirring until smooth, and let it simmer for another 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the soup again, add the meat, mushroom ketchup, wine, and season with salt.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tails
Collagen from the bones and connective tissue breaks down during long simmering, giving the meat tenderness and the broth body.
Fat from the broth
Coats flour particles so they disperse evenly, forming a roux that thickens the soup without lumps.
Flour
Starch thickens the broth as it heats with the fat, giving the soup a smooth, fuller texture.
Onions
Release sugars and aromatic compounds during simmering, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the broth.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury umami flavour to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Making the roux paste. If flour is added without enough fat or stirred poorly, it clumps and stays raw-tasting. Cooking the fat and flour together, then adding broth gradually while stirring, keeps the soup smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, allspice, pepper, flour, mushroom, ketchup, wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, pepper, flour, mushroom, ketchup, wine. 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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