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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with oxtails, onions, spices, and ketchup, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Basil and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,294 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oxtails

  1. Cut the oxtails into joints, wash them in lukewarm water and dry with a cloth.

  2. Dredge the oxtails with flour.

  3. Fry the oxtails in sweet dripping in a frying pan until light brown.

  4. Place the oxtails in a stewpan with warm water.

Make the soup

  1. Slice the onions and dredge them with flour.

  2. Fry the onions until brown.

  3. Add hot water and mix well, then pour the onion mixture into the stewpan with the oxtails.

  4. Add allspice, black peppercorns, basil, and sliced carrot tied in muslin.

  5. Simmer on low heat for 3 hours until meat is tender.

  6. Remove the oxtails and strain the soup over them.

Chill, season and serve

  1. Let cool, preferably overnight, then remove the fat from the top.

  2. Cut the meat into pieces.

  3. Stir in salt, cayenne pepper, and ketchup.

  4. Return the mixture to the stewpan and heat gently for about 30 minutes.

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. Basil + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Basil + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Allspice + basiltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together195 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Oxtails
Collagen-rich meat that breaks down during long simmering to give tender meat and body to the broth.
Flour
Dredging coats the meat and onions, helping them brown and thickening the soup slightly.
Onions
Browned onions add deep savory flavour and sweetness to the broth.
Sweet dripping or oil
Fat for frying that carries heat and promotes browning on the oxtails and onions.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth while it simmers.
Ketchup
Adds acidity and sweet-tangy depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the meat is tender. A low, steady simmer lets collagen in the oxtails slowly break down into gelatin, giving tender meat and a rich body. Boiling hard toughens the meat and clouds the broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, allspice, basil, carrot, pepper, ketchup):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, allspice, basil, carrot, pepper, ketchup. 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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