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Oxtail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, ham, vegetables, herbs, and seasonings, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Oxtail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Cut the ox tails into pieces at the joints and wash them.

  2. Melt the butter.

  3. Add the ox tails.

  4. Slice the vegetables.

  5. Add them along with the peppercorns and herbs.

  6. Add ½ cup of water.

  7. Stir over high heat until the juices are released.

Simmer the soup

  1. Fill the stew pan with the remaining water and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the salt.

  3. Skim the surface.

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

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the tails.

  2. Skim the soup.

  3. Strain it.

  4. Thicken the soup with flour.

  5. Add the ketchup for flavor.

  6. Return the tails to the soup.

  7. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  8. Serve.

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
Break down during long simmering, releasing gelatin that gives the soup body and a rich texture.
Butter
Carries fat that helps flavor the meat and vegetables as they begin to brown.
Ham
Adds savory, salty depth to the broth.
Ketchup
Adds tangy sweetness and a deeper color to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 4 hours. Vigorous boiling makes the broth cloudy and can toughen the meat. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the tails slowly break down into gelatin, giving clear broth and tender meat.

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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