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Soup

Soupe Aux Queues De Bceuf, or Ox Tail Soup

A soup made from ox tail, vegetables, stock, black pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Soupe Aux Queues De Bceuf, or Ox Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox tail

  1. Cut the ox tail into pieces at the joints.

  2. Soak the pieces in water overnight to draw out the blood.

  3. Stew the pieces until very tender.

  4. Remove the pieces from the liquid.

Make the soup

  1. Strain the liquid.

  2. Remove all the fat.

  3. Prepare vegetables as for vegetable soup.

  4. Add the vegetables to the strained liquid along with some good stock.

  5. Season the soup with a little black pepper.

  6. Let it boil gently, skimming off any foam.

  7. Keep the ox tail hot in a separate pan.

Serve

  1. Place the ox tail in a tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over it, garnishing with picked parsley.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tail
Provides the meat and gelatinous body of the soup when stewed until very tender.
Vegetables
Add flavour, body and sweetness to the strained broth as the soup simmers.
Good stock
Adds savoury depth and a richer base to the soup.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam while the soup boils gently. Foam and impurities rise to the surface as the liquid heats. Skimming them off keeps the soup clear and free of bitter or greasy flavours. Boiling hard instead of gently would break up the liquid and cloud it.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, pepper, parsley. 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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