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Ox-Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, peas, root vegetables, and aromatic spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Ox-Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Clean the ox-tails and soak them in water.

  2. Stew the ox-tails in 5 to 6 quarts of water until tender.

  3. Let the soup cool, then remove the fat.

Make the soup

  1. Add the split peas or whole peas, carrots, turnips, potatoes, onions, sweet herbs, and celery to the soup.

  2. Simmer until the vegetables are tender enough to pulp with the peas through a sieve.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, mace, allspice, ground cloves, and cayenne.

  4. If the soup is not thick enough, boil in a slice of bread or add rice flour gradually.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tails
Long stewing releases gelatin and flavour, giving the soup its body and rich taste.
Split peas or whole peas
Break down when simmered and pulped, thickening the soup and adding body.
Potatoes
Soften and break down during simmering, adding starch that helps thicken the soup.
Carrots
Soften and pulp into the soup, adding sweetness and colour.
Onions
Soften during simmering and pulp into the soup, adding savoury depth.
Rice flour
Starch that thickens the liquid when stirred in gradually.

The step that matters

Let the soup cool, then remove the fat. Fat rises and sets on cooled stock as a solid layer, so it can be lifted off cleanly. Skipping this leaves the soup greasy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, carrot, turnip, potato, onion, celery, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, carrot, turnip, potato, onion, celery, 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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