Skip to main content
Main

Potage De Queue De Boeuf Li4. — Thick Ox-tail Soup

A thick soup made from ox tail, vegetables, stock, and seasonings, finished with butter, sherry, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Potage De Queue De Boeuf Li4. — Thick Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the ox-tail into joints.

  2. Fry the joints in butter with the chopped vegetables.

Simmer the stock

  1. Put the ox-tail and vegetables into a large saucepan with the stock, pepper, salt, and cloves.

  2. Boil gently for nearly four hours.

  3. Strain the stock and remove the pieces of tail.

  4. When the stock is cold, remove the fat and return the stock to a stewpan to boil.

  5. When it boils, stir in a thickening made of flour and cook well.

  6. Add the sherry and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Serve with the pieces of tail in the soup.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tail
Gives the soup its meaty body and rich flavour as it simmers for hours.
Butter
Fat for frying the joints and vegetables, adding browning and savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the stock so the soup becomes body-rich and smooth rather than watery.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic sweetness to the finished soup.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the tail and vegetables.

The step that matters

Thickening the stock with flour. Flour stirred into boiling liquid can clump if added raw or unevenly; it should be smoothly blended first and cooked well so it thickens fully and loses its raw floury taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, ham, parsley, thyme, marjoram):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, ham, parsley, thyme, marjoram. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipes