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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tail, vegetables, ham, and stock, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tail

  1. Cut the ox-tail into small joints and place them in a stewpan covered with cold water. Bring to a boil and strain.

  2. Dry the pieces of ox-tail, roll them in flour, and add them to the stewpan with the ham and sliced vegetables and butter. Fry until browned.

Simmer the soup

  1. Add the stock, herbs, peppercorns, cloves, and salt. Boil and skim well.

  2. Cover and cook gently for about 4 hours.

  3. Strain the soup, remove the fat, and return it to the stewpan.

Finish and serve

  1. When boiling, add the sherry (if using) and cornflour mixed smoothly. Stir and cook for a few minutes.

  2. Serve the smaller pieces of the tail in the soup.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 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-tail
Gives the soup its body and rich meaty flavour as it simmers for hours.
Butter or cooking fat
Fat for frying the tail, adding browned, savoury flavour before the liquid goes in.
Cornflour
Starch that thickens the soup to a smoother, silkier body when cooked.
Onions
Sweet, aromatic base that builds flavour in the stock as they cook.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a warm, aromatic note to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the cornflour. Cornflour must be mixed smoothly into cold liquid first, then added to boiling soup and stirred. Added dry or lumpy, it clumps and never thickens evenly, because starch granules need to disperse before they swell in heat.

Swap the onion

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

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

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