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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made from ox tails, cloves, onions, allspice, black pepper, mushroom ketchup, wine, and thickened with fat and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the ox tails in warm water while preparing the vegetables.

  2. In a gallon stew pan, combine the ox tails, cloves, onions, allspice, black pepper, and cover with cold water.

  3. Skim off any scum that rises, then cover the pot and simmer gently for about 2 hours until the meat is tender.

Make the broth

  1. Remove the meat from the bones and cut it into bite-sized pieces.

  2. Skim the broth and strain it through a sieve.

Thicken and finish

  1. For a thickened soup, make a paste with the fat and flour in a clean stew pan over heat, stirring well.

  2. Gradually add the broth to the paste, stirring until smooth, and let it simmer for another 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the soup again, add the meat, mushroom ketchup, wine, and season with salt.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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, making the meat tender and the broth rich.
Flour
Forms a paste with the fat that thickens the broth into a smooth, body-rich soup.
Fat from broth
Carries flavor and, mixed with flour, creates the roux that thickens the soup.
Onions
Release sweetness and savory depth into the broth during the long simmer.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Making the paste with fat and flour. Flour must be cooked in fat and stirred well before liquid is added, so it dissolves smoothly instead of forming lumps and thickens evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, allspice, pepper, flour, mushroom, ketchup, wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, pepper, flour, mushroom, ketchup, wine. 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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