Skip to main content
Main

Oxtail Slewed

A slow-cooked oxtail stew with onions, carrots, parsley, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Oxtail Slewed

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the oxtails into pieces.

Make the stew

  1. In a pot, melt the butter and add the flour to make a roux.

  2. Add the oxtails, onions, carrots, and parsley to the pot.

  3. Season with pepper, cayenne, cloves, and salt.

  4. Cover and simmer slowly until the oxtails are tender.

  5. Serve hot.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Oxtails
Provide the meat that becomes tender and rich through slow simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid when cooked with butter as a roux.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and forms the base of the roux with flour.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body as they soften in the stew.
Onions
Add savory depth and sweetness as they soften during simmering.

The step that matters

Cover and simmer slowly until the oxtails are tender. Oxtail is rich in connective tissue that breaks down into gelatin only with long, gentle heat. Rushing with high heat leaves the meat tough and the sauce thin.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clove, carrot, parsley, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, carrot, parsley, butter, flour. 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

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes