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Ox Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, ham, stock, port wine, ketchup, pepper, salt, and thickened with flour or cornflour, finished with fried forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ox Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare stock from beef or bones and vegetables, then cool and remove fat.

  2. Soak the ox tails in water, then cut into joints.

  3. Place the joints back in the same water with ham and simmer until tender.

Make the soup

  1. Strain the stock and add the liquid from the ox tails, along with the best pieces of the tails.

  2. Stir in port wine, pepper, salt, and ketchup.

  3. Thicken the soup with flour or cornflour.

Serve

  1. Before serving, add the fried forcemeat balls.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  2. Ketchup + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Beef + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Ham + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Port wine + ketchuptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tails
Release gelatin and meaty flavour into the broth as they simmer until tender.
Stock
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries all the other flavours.
Ham
Adds salty, smoky depth to the simmering broth.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity depth to the finished soup.
Flour or cornflour
Thickens the soup by swelling with heat to give body.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with flour or cornflour. Starch must be added to the hot liquid and brought to a simmer so the granules swell and thicken it; if it is added to cold liquid or not cooked through, it can clump or taste raw.

“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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