Skip to main content
Main

Ox Tail Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the tails into joints and wash them.

  2. Put the joints into a stewpan with the butter.

  3. Stir over high heat until it boils.

  4. Add the rest of the water and salt, and boil again.

  5. Skim the surface.

  6. Cut all the vegetables into slices.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add the sliced vegetables along with the other ingredients except the port wine.

  2. Simmer for 4.5 hours.

  3. Strain the soup.

  4. Add the port wine.

  5. Heat for 5 minutes.

  6. Return the tails to the soup 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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 meat and gelatin that give the soup body and a rich, savoury flavour.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and helps brown the joints at the start.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften during the long simmer.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth during simmering.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and earthy flavour to the broth.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, depth and aroma, added at the end so its flavour stays bright.

The step that matters

Skim the surface. Skimming removes foam and fat that rise as the liquid first boils. Removing them early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting over the long simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, carrot, turnip, clove, sugar, port wine):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, carrot, turnip, clove, sugar, port 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes