Skip to main content
Main

Siewed Oxtails

Oxtails stewed with allspice, mace, cayenne, cloves, onion, and salt, served hot with toast snippets and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Siewed Oxtails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the oxtails into joints and parboil them.

  2. Place them in a stewpan and cover with enough water.

  3. Add salt, allspice, mace, cayenne, cloves, and chopped onion.

Stew and finish

  1. Stew gently for 1 hour and 45 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquid.

  3. Boil the strained liquid.

  4. Pour the hot liquid over the meat.

  5. Garnish with toast snippets.

  6. Serve with a fresh lemon and Reading sauce.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Oxtails
Provide the meat and collagen-rich connective tissue that becomes tender and gives body to the stew.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and flavor base to the cooking liquid.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the stewing liquid.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor that deepens the stew.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 1 hour and 45 minutes. Gentle, steady simmering rather than a hard boil lets the collagen in the oxtails slowly break down into gelatin, making the meat tender and the liquid rich, while keeping the meat from toughening or falling apart too early.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (allspice, mace, pepper, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against allspice, mace, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes