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Oxtail Soup

A hearty soup made with oxtail, vegetables, stock, and seasonings simmered together.

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

Oxtail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the oxtail

  1. Dredge the oxtail in flour and fry in butter until nicely browned.

Simmer the soup

  1. Add the oxtail to the brown stock and simmer for two hours.

  2. Parboil the diced vegetables for ten minutes, then drain and add them to the stock.

  3. Cook until the vegetables are tender, then add salt, pepper, wine, Worcestershire sauce, and lemon juice.

  4. Let it cook for an additional ten minutes.

  5. Serve.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oxtail
Provides the main meat flavour and, after long simmering, gelatinous body to the broth.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the meat and vegetables.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and a rich, aromatic depth to the finished soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty broth.

The step that matters

Browning the oxtail. Dredging in flour and frying in butter until well browned triggers the Maillard reaction, which builds deep roasted flavour that carries into the broth. Pale meat yields a flatter, less savoury soup.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, onion, turnip, pepper, madeira wine, sauce):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Cherryfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, onion, turnip, pepper, madeira wine, sauce. 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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