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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made from ox tails, vegetables, and herbs, thickened with arrowroot or rice flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash and soak the ox-tails.

  2. Pour cold water over the tails and bring to a boil gradually.

  3. Add salt.

  4. Skim off any scum that forms on the surface.

  5. Once the scum ceases to rise, add carrots, onions, herbs, celery, turnips, cloves, and peppercorns.

  6. Stew gently for 3 to 3½ hours, depending on the size of the tails.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the tails.

  2. Strain the broth.

  3. Skim off the fat.

  4. Cut the meat from the tails.

  5. Return it to the stock.

  6. When the stock begins to boil, stir in a thickening of arrowroot or rice flour mixed with cayenne and salt to taste.

  7. Serve the soup very hot.

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 + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + peppertop 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
Provide the meat and rich flavour that give the soup its body.
Arrowroot or rice flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, lightly body-filled soup when heated.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock as it simmers.
Carrots
Contribute gentle sweetness and aroma to the long-simmered broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum and fat. Scum rises as the broth first heats and fat collects on top as it cooks. Removing scum before it breaks into the stock keeps the broth clear, and skimming fat after straining keeps the soup from tasting greasy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, turnip, clove, arrowroot, 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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