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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty broth made from ox tails, vegetables, and herbs, thickened with arrowroot or rice flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash and soak the ox-tails.

  2. Pour cold water over the tails and bring to a boil gradually.

  3. Add salt and remove any scum that forms on the surface.

  4. Once scum ceases to rise, add carrots, onions, savory herbs, celery, turnips, cloves, and peppercorns.

Stew and strain

  1. Stew gently for 3 to 3½ hours, depending on the size of the tails.

  2. Remove the tails, strain the broth, and skim off the fat.

  3. Cut the meat from the tails or serve in joints, and return to the broth.

Thicken and serve

  1. When boiling, stir in a thickening of arrowroot or rice flour mixed with cayenne and salt to taste.

  2. Serve very 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. Turnip + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tails
Provide the meat and gelatin-rich bone that give the soup its body and savour.
Arrowroot or rice flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, slightly glossy consistency when heated.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth during long stewing.
Onions
Contribute savory sweetness and aroma as they soften into the stock.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum before adding vegetables. Scum rising from the tails during the first boil can make the broth cloudy and bitter, so it should be removed before the vegetables and seasonings go in.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, turnip, clove, arrowroot, pepper. 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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