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Ox-Tail Soup

A hearty soup made by simmering ox-tail with vegetables, herbs, and spices, then puréeing the vegetables and thickening with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Ox-Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, boil the ox-tail in 1 pint of water with butter or beef dripping for 3 hours, until the water is reduced by half.

  2. Add the chopped carrot, turnip, onion, celery, lemon juice, thyme, parsley, peppercorns, cayenne, and salt.

  3. Cook until the vegetables are tender, then remove them and puree through a coarse sieve.

  4. Mix the pureed vegetables with 2 tablespoons of flour and combine with the gravy in the pot.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

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 main meaty flavour and body as it simmers for hours.
Flour
Thickens the pureed vegetables and gravy so the soup becomes smoother and fuller.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the soup base once cooked and pureed.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and sweetness as it softens into the soup.

The step that matters

Cook the ox-tail until the liquid is reduced by half. Long, slow simmering breaks down collagen in the ox-tail and concentrates the liquid, which gives the gravy its body and rich flavour before the vegetables are added.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, turnip, celery, lemon, thyme, parsley. 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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