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Stewed Ox-tails

A slow‑cooked stew of ox‑tails with onion, mace, pepper, allspice, savory herbs, lemon juice, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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 ↓

Stewed Ox-tails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oxtail

  1. Divide the ox-tails at the joints and wash them.

  2. Place the ox-tails in a stewpan and cover with sufficient water.

  3. Bring the stewpan to a boil and remove the scum from the surface.

Simmer the stew

  1. Add the onion, mace, pepper, allspice, salt, and savory herbs, then cover the stewpan.

  2. Let the ox-tails simmer gently for about 2½ hours until tender.

  3. Remove the ox-tails from the stewpan.

Finish the gravy

  1. Make a thickening with butter and flour and add it to the gravy.

  2. Boil the gravy for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the gravy into a saucepan and return the ox-tails to the saucepan.

  4. Add the lemon juice and mushroom ketchup, then bring the mixture to a boil.

  5. Serve garnished with croutons or toasted bread.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 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

Ox-tails
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and the gravy rich.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the gravy as it cooks, while butter adds richness and smooth body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich, long-cooked gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury depth and umami to the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmering the ox-tails gently until tender. A rolling boil toughens meat and can break the tails apart, while gentle simmering slowly dissolves collagen into gelatin, which gives tender meat and a silky gravy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, pepper, allspice, butter, flour, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, pepper, allspice, butter, flour, lemon. 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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