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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, onions, carrots, turnip, flour, white pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, combine the ox tails, onions, carrots, turnip, flour, white pepper, and water.

  2. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the ox tails and cut the meat into small pieces.

  4. Return the bones to the pot and boil for a short time.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 collagen-rich bones that give the soup its body and savory flavor.
Flour
Thickens the broth slightly, giving it a fuller, more body-rich texture.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften during the long simmer.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering for 2 hours. A gentle simmer, not a hard boil, extracts flavor and gelatin from the bones slowly while keeping the meat tender and the broth clear.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, turnip, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, turnip, flour. 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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