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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox-tail, water, carrots, onions, celery, salt, pepper, thyme, and bay leaf, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the ox-tail into pieces.

  2. Place the pieces in a large pot and cover with water.

  3. Add chopped vegetables and herbs.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Simmer for several hours until the meat is tender.

  2. Strain the soup and serve hot.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ox-tail
Provides meat and collagen that give the soup body and richness as it simmers.
Vegetables
Carrots, onions and celery add sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook.
Herbs
Thyme and bay leaf add aromatic flavour to the broth during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer until the meat is tender. Ox-tail is tough connective tissue. Long, gentle simmering breaks down collagen into gelatin, making the meat tender and the broth silky. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and cloud the soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, pepper, thyme. 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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