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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, ham, vegetables, herbs, and flavored with ketchup and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ox-tails

  1. Cut the ox-tails into joints and wash them.

  2. In a large stewpan, melt the butter and add the ox-tails.

  3. Pour in 5 pints of water and stir over high heat until the juices are drawn.

Make the soup

  1. Fill the stewpan with more water; when boiling, add the salt.

  2. Skim the surface, then add the sliced vegetables, peppercorns, and herbs.

  3. Simmer gently for 4 hours, or until the tails are tender.

  4. Remove the tails, skim, and strain the soup.

  5. Thicken the soup with flour and flavor with ketchup and port wine.

  6. Return the tails to the soup and simmer for 6 minutes before serving.

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
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, giving the soup body and tender meat.
Onions
Sliced onions release sugars and aromatic compounds that deepen the soup's savory flavor.
Carrots
Sliced carrots add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during simmering.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, acidity and fruity depth to the finished soup.
Ketchup
Adds tomato-based acidity and sweetness that rounds out the broth's flavor.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface. Skimming removes coagulated proteins and fat that rise as the broth heats, keeping the soup clear and free of greasy, murky flavors.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, carrot, turnip, onion, leek, celery):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, carrot, turnip, onion, leek, celery. 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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