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Soup

Ox-TAIL Soup

A soup made from ox tails, onions, bread crust, herbs, cloves, peppercorns, wine, ketchup, and Harvey's sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Ox-TAIL Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and cut the ox tails into pieces.

Simmer

  1. In a pot, boil the ox tails gently in sufficient water for several hours.

  2. Add the onions, crust of bread, sweet herbs, cloves, and peppercorns.

Finish

  1. Once the tails are tender, strain the liquid and remove the fat.

  2. If not using ham bones, add ketchup, Harvey's sauce, and a glass of wine to taste.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Clove + winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-isoeugenol (clove, spicy).

  4. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  5. Bread + clovetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,129 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tails
Provide meat and gelatin that give the soup body and a rich mouthfeel.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften and release flavour into the broth.
Crusty bread
Thickens the broth slightly as it breaks down during simmering.
Sweet herbs
Infuse the broth with aromatic, herbal flavour.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Simmering gently until the tails are tender. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the tails slowly break down into gelatin, giving body and tenderness. A hard boil toughens the meat and clouds the broth, so keep the liquid at a low simmer for the full cooking time.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, bread, ketchup, sauce, wine):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, bread, ketchup, sauce, 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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