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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, ham, carrots, turnips, onions, celery, savory herbs, butter, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the ox-tails into pieces and wash them.

  2. Pat the pieces dry in a stew pan with the butter.

  3. Slice the vegetables and add them with the herbs to ½ cup of water.

  4. Stir over medium heat until the juices are released.

Simmer the soup

  1. Fill the stew pan with water and bring to a boil, then add the salt.

  2. Skim the surface and simmer gently for 4 hours, or until the tails are tender.

  3. Remove the tails, skim the soup, and strain it.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the soup with browned flour.

  2. Return the tails, cut into small pieces, to the soup and 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tails
Break down slowly during long simmering, releasing gelatin that gives the soup body and richness.
Onions
Build savory sweetness and aroma as they soften and brown in the butter and juices.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook down.
Browned flour (in the method)
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid, adding a nutty, toasted flavor.
Butter
Carries flavor and adds richness when the tails are first patted dry and cooked.

The step that matters

Skim the surface and simmer gently. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear and lets the tails turn tender; a hard boil makes it cloudy and greasy, and skimming removes the foam and fat that rise to the top.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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