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Ox Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, salt pork, carrot, onion, celery, peppercorns, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 salt pork into pieces and place it in a large saucepan.

  2. When it begins to render fat, add the chopped onion.

  3. Cut the ox tails into pieces at the joints and add them to the saucepan.

Simmer

  1. Add the carrot, celery, and peppercorns to the soup kettle.

  2. Cover with 1 gallon of water and let it simmer for 4 hours.

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

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Pork + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,772 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
Provide meat, collagen and gelatin that give the soup body and richness as they simmer.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the pan, adding savory richness and flavor to the base.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it softens in the rendered fat.
Carrot
Contributes natural sweetness and savory depth to the simmering broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic, herbal flavor to the broth as it simmers.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, carrot, celery. 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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