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Clear Ox-tail Soup

A clear soup made from ox tail, vegetables, and aromatics, clarified with egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Clear Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tail

  1. Cut the ox-tail into short lengths and cover with cold water, adding a little coarse sea salt.

  2. Bring to a boil, then strain.

Simmer the soup

  1. Return the tail to the saucepan with the vegetables, bouquet garni, peppercorns, cloves, and mace.

  2. Simmer gently for 4 hours, keeping the saucepan covered.

  3. Strain the soup and set the meat aside.

  4. Let the stock cool to remove the fat.

Clarify and serve

  1. Clarify the stock with the whites and shells of the eggs, then strain again.

  2. Reheat the clarified stock.

  3. Serve garnished with pieces of the tail and some carrot and turnip cut into fancy shapes.

  4. Optionally, add a glass of sherry or a tablespoon of arrowroot mixed with a little stock for a thicker 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
Releases gelatin and savory flavor into the stock during long, gentle simmering.
Whites and shells of eggs
Egg whites bind impurities as they set, clearing the stock into a clear broth.
Arrowroot (in the method)
Starch that thickens the soup when stirred in and heated.

The step that matters

Clarify the stock with egg whites and shells. Egg whites must be whisked into cool stock and heated slowly so they coagulate and trap particles. Boiling too hard or stirring after setting breaks up the raft, leaving the soup cloudy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley, thyme, clove. 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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