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Ox- Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox-tails, gravy beef, root vegetables, herbs, and optional brown roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox- Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and vegetables

  1. Cut the ox-tails into pieces at the joints.

  2. Fry the ox-tails in a little butter with the gravy beef, carrot, turnip, onions, leek, celery, sweet herbs, and bay leaf.

  3. Add 1 pint of water and 1 teaspoon of peppercorns; stir until the pan is glazed.

  4. Fill the stewpan with 3 quarts of water, stirring occasionally.

Simmer the soup

  1. When it boils, reduce heat and let it simmer until the tails are tender.

  2. Remove the tails and trim them.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the turnip and carrot into fancy shapes, about 2 cups total, and add 2 dozen button onions and a head of celery.

  2. Boil the vegetables in a little of the soup until tender.

  3. Strain the soup through a fine cloth, add the vegetables and ox-tails, and season with salt and lump sugar.

  4. For a thicker soup, add a little brown roux.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 rich meaty flavor into the broth as they simmer slowly.
Gravy beef
Adds deep beefy flavor and body to the stock during long simmering.
Onions
Frying them builds sweet, browned savory notes that deepen the soup's flavor.
Brown roux
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty depth of flavor.

The step that matters

Frying the ox-tails and vegetables. Browning in butter creates caramelized flavors through the Maillard reaction, which give the broth its depth. Pale frying produces a flatter, weaker soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, sugar):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, sugar. 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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