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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, ham, vegetables, herbs, catsup, port wine, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the ox-tails into pieces at the joints, then wash them.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  3. Add the ox-tails to the melted butter.

  4. Slice the carrots, turnips, onions, leek, and celery.

Make the soup

  1. Add the sliced vegetables and the savory herbs to the stewpan.

  2. Pour in ½ pint of water.

  3. Stir over high heat until juices are released.

  4. Fill the stewpan with water.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  6. Add the salt.

  7. Skim the surface.

  8. Simmer gently for 4 hours until the tails are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the tails from the soup.

  2. Skim the soup.

  3. Strain the soup.

  4. Thicken the soup with flour.

  5. Stir in the catsup and port wine.

  6. Return the tails to the soup.

  7. Simmer for 5 minutes before serving.

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
Their connective tissue breaks down during long simmering, giving the soup body and a rich mouthfeel.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and helps the ox-tails and vegetables brown lightly at the start.
Onions
Release sweetness and savoury aroma as they cook, building the base flavour of the soup.
Ham
Adds salty, smoky savoury depth to the broth.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and a deeper, fruity flavour to the finished soup.
Catsup
Adds sweet-tangy acidity that rounds out the seasoning.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 4 hours until the tails are tender. A gentle simmer lets the connective tissue in the tails slowly break down into gelatin, which gives body. A hard boil toughens the meat and churns fat into the broth, making it cloudy and greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, 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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