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Ox Tail Sour

A hearty stew made with ox tails, neat's foot, vegetables, and seasonings, finished with port wine and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 Sour

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and cut the ox tails and neat's foot into small joints.

  2. Soak them in water.

Make the soup

  1. In a stew-pan, heat the clarified suet or fat and add the meat; simmer for 10 minutes.

  2. Add cold water, onions, sweet herbs, carrot, turnip, celery, and seasonings.

  3. Let it stew until the meat is tender enough to remove from the bones.

  4. Thicken with browned flour if necessary.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, add port wine and mushroom ketchup.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tails
Release gelatin and meaty flavour into the broth during long stewing.
Neat's foot
Adds gelatin, giving the soup body and a silky mouthfeel.
Onions
Build savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften in the broth.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the stewed broth.
Browned flour
Thickens the broth and adds a toasted, deeper colour and flavour.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, depth and a rich fruity note at the end.

The step that matters

Let it stew until the meat is tender enough to remove from the bones. Collagen in tendons and bones breaks down into gelatin only with long, gentle simmering. Rushing this leaves tough meat and a thin, unbodied broth.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, pepper, allspice, clove, flour. 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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