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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, onion, peppercorns, cloves, celery, herbs, and salt, simmered for six hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,768 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and cut the ox tails at the joints.

  2. Heat the beef drippings in a pot and sauté the onion and half of the ox tail.

Simmer

  1. Add all ingredients to a soup kettle with the water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add the peppercorns, cloves, salt, mixed herbs, and celery.

  3. Cook slowly for six hours.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup, saving some pieces of meat.

  2. Remove the fat, reheat the soup, and adjust seasoning if necessary.

  3. Add small pieces of meat to each serving and garnish with parsley.

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. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tails
Collagen-rich meat and bones that release gelatin, giving the broth body over long simmering.
Onion
Sweetness and savory depth once softened and browned in the fat.
Beef drippings
Fat for sautéing that carries flavor from the onion and meat into the broth.
Peppercorns
Adds a mild, warm pungency that flavors the broth.
Cloves
Adds a strong aromatic warmth; a small amount goes a long way.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for six hours. A gentle simmer slowly extracts gelatin and flavor from the bones and meat while keeping the broth clear. A hard, rolling boil emulsifies fat into the liquid and clouds it, so the soup should be kept at a bare simmer.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, beef, parsley):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, beef, 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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