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Ox-tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, ham, butter, turnip, leek, onions, celery, herbs, carrots, catsup, port wine, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the ox-tails into pieces at the joints and wash them.

  2. In a stew-pan, melt the butter and add the ox-tails.

  3. Chop the vegetables and add them along with the herbs.

  4. Add ½ pint of water and stir over high heat until the juices are released.

Simmer

  1. Fill the stew-pan with water, bring to a boil, and add salt.

  2. Simmer gently for 4 hours or longer until the tails are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the tails, strain the soup, and thicken it with the wine and catsup.

  2. Return the tails to the soup and simmer for a few more minutes before serving.

  3. Skim the soup 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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Leek + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, giving the soup body and rich flavor.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and helps brown the meat and vegetables at the start.
Onions
Sweet, aromatic base that builds savory depth as it cooks down into the broth.
Port wine
Adds acidity and sweetness, and its flavor deepens the soup when thickened into it.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and color to the broth as they soften.

The step that matters

Simmer gently rather than boil. A hard boil makes the broth cloudy and can toughen the meat, while gentle simmering lets the tails become tender and the soup clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, turnip, leek, celery, pepper, port wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, turnip, leek, celery, pepper, port wine. 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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