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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, stock, carrots, turnips, onions, celery, pepper, sugar, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tails

  1. Cut the ox tails into 1‑inch pieces using a knife and mallet.

  2. Soak the pieces in tepid water for 1 hour.

Make the soup

  1. Place the soaked tails in a stew‑pan and cover with stock.

  2. Add the carrots, turnips, onions, and celery.

  3. Boil slowly for 2 to 3 hours until tender.

  4. Strain the stock to ensure it is clear.

  5. Prepare additional carrot and turnip as for vegetable soup, and add parsley leaves.

  6. Season with pepper and sugar, then boil for a few 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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 gelatin that give the soup its body and rich flavour.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma as they cook into the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the soup.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and soft texture as they cook through.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 2 to 3 hours until tender. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the tails slowly break down into gelatin, making the meat tender and the broth full-bodied. A hard rolling boil can toughen the meat and cloud the stock.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, pepper, sugar, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, pepper, sugar, 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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