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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made from ox tails simmered with onions, spices, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 tails

  1. Divide the ox tails into joints and wash them in lukewarm water. Dry with a cloth.

  2. Dredge the tails with flour and fry in a little sweet dripping until light brown.

  3. Place the fried tails in a stewpan with warm water.

Make the soup

  1. Slice the onions, dredge with flour, and fry until brown. Add hot water, stir, and pour into the stewpan with the tails.

  2. Add allspice, black peppercorns, basil, and sliced carrot tied in muslin. Simmer on low heat until the meat is tender, about 3 hours.

  3. Remove the tails and strain the soup over them. Let cool, preferably overnight.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, remove the fat from the top, cut the meat into pieces, and stir in salt, cayenne pepper, and ketchup. Heat gently for 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

Ox tails
Provide the meat and collagen-rich body that gives the soup its richness and texture.
Onions
Fried until brown, they add deep, sweet flavour and colour to the broth.
Flour (in the method)
Dredging helps the tails and onions brown and slightly thickens the soup.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and aromatic depth to the simmering broth.
Ketchup
Adds acidity and tomato sweetness to season the finished soup.

The step that matters

Simmer until the meat is tender. Long, gentle simmering breaks down the connective tissue in ox tail, turning it tender and giving the broth body. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and cloud the soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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