Skip to main content
Main

Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made from ox tails simmered with spices, onions, and wine, thickened with flour and fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox tails

  1. Ask the butcher to divide the ox tails at the joints.

  2. Soak the divided ox tails in warm water.

Make the broth

  1. Combine the ox tails, cloves, onions, allspice, and black pepper in a gallon stew pan.

  2. Cover the mixture with cold water.

  3. Skim off any scum that rises.

  4. Cover the pot tightly and simmer gently for about 2 hours until the meat is tender.

  5. Remove the meat from the bones and cut it into bite-sized pieces.

  6. Skim the broth.

  7. Strain the broth through a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Melt the fat in a clean stew pan.

  2. Add enough flour to make a paste.

  3. Stir the paste over heat.

  4. Gradually pour in the broth, stirring until smooth.

  5. Let the soup simmer for another 30 minutes.

  6. Strain the soup again.

  7. Add the meat.

  8. Add mushroom ketchup.

  9. Add wine.

  10. Season with salt.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 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
Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue and collagen, making the meat tender and the broth rich.
Flour
Thickens the broth by swelling with heat when cooked into the melted fat and liquid.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth to the broth as they cook down.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished soup.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavor to the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour paste into the broth. Flour must be cooked into the fat before liquid is added, and the broth poured in gradually while stirring, so starch disperses evenly without lumps and thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, allspice, pepper, flour, mushroom, ketchup, wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, pepper, flour, mushroom, ketchup, wine. 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

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes