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Ox Tail Soup

A soup made with ox tails, onion, carrot, salt, pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ox Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oxtail

  1. Divide the ox tails at the joints and soak them in warm water.

  2. Place the tails in a stew pan with cold water and skim off the froth.

Simmer and finish

  1. Boil the meat for three to four hours until it is tender and falls off the bones.

  2. Remove the bones and add the chopped onion and carrot.

  3. Continue boiling until the vegetables are cooked.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 that soften into a rich, full-bodied broth during long simmering.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it cooks into the broth.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the soup as it softens.

The step that matters

Skimming the froth. Foam that forms early contains denatured proteins and impurities; removing it keeps the broth clear and free of off flavors.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, 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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