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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made by simmering ox-tails with vegetables, herbs, and spices, 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 and remove the scum as it forms.

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

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

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the tails, strain the broth, and skim off the fat.

  2. Divide the tails into joints and return them to the stock.

  3. When boiling, stir in a thickening of arrowroot or rice flour mixed with cayenne and salt to taste.

  4. Serve 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 gelatin that give the soup its body and richness.
Arrowroot or rice flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, silky consistency when heated.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the stock as they cook down.
Onions
Build savory depth and aroma as they soften in the broth.
Celery
Contributes savory, aromatic flavor to the stock during long stewing.

The step that matters

Removing the scum as it forms. Scum is coagulated proteins and impurities released as the water heats. Skimming it while the liquid comes up to a boil keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting instead of cloudy or bitter.

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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