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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox-tail, ham, vegetables, and sherry, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox-tail

  1. Cut the ox-tail into small joints and place the joints in a stewpan.

  2. Cover the joints with cold water and bring to a boil.

  3. Strain the water.

  4. Dry the pieces of ox-tail and roll them in flour.

Make the soup

  1. Add the flour-coated pieces, ham, sliced vegetables, and butter to the stewpan and fry until browned.

  2. Add the stock, herbs, peppercorns, cloves, and salt.

  3. Boil and skim well.

  4. Cover and cook gently for about 4 hours.

  5. Strain the soup and remove the fat.

  6. Return the soup to the stewpan.

Finish and serve

  1. When the soup boils, add the sherry and cornflour mixed smoothly, and stir.

  2. Cook for a few minutes.

  3. Serve the smaller pieces of the tail in the soup.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tail
Provides the main meat and, as it simmers, rich body and flavour to the broth.
Butter
Fat for frying the meat and vegetables, adding richness and helping them brown.
Cornflour
Starch that thickens the strained soup when it is brought to a boil.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished soup.
Onions
Sweetness and savoury depth from the vegetables softened in the pan.

The step that matters

Fry until browned. Browning the floured meat and vegetables in butter builds deep, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction, which carries into the finished broth. Pale frying gives a flatter soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, butter, ham, parsley, thyme. 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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