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Ox Tail Stewed

A slow‑cooked stew of ox tails with onion, herbs, and a caramel‑flavored gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Ox Tail Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox tails

  1. Cut the ox tails into pieces at the joints, wash well, and soak in salt water overnight.

  2. Place the ox tails in a saucepan with the onion, cloves, mixed herbs, celery, and bay leaf.

  3. Stir to form a glaze, then add 2 quarts of water.

  4. Simmer for 4 hours or until the meat is tender.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the meat and set aside on a dish.

  2. In the remaining stock, boil 2 tablespoons of flour and 1 tablespoon of butter until creamy.

  3. Return the meat to the pan.

  4. Heat the meat through.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Bring the mixture to a boil again.

  7. Strain the gravy.

  8. Add a few drops of caramel to the gravy.

  9. Pour the gravy over the meat.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot, adding ½ cup of claret or port wine if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Ox tails
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and enriching the stock.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a creamy gravy as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth body to the gravy, working with the flour.
Celery
Adds savory, aromatic flavor to the stock during simmering.
Onion
Builds savory depth and aroma in the stock during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer until the meat is tender. Ox tail is rich in connective tissue that needs long, gentle simmering to break down into gelatin. Rushing or boiling hard can leave the meat tough or stringy, so it should be checked until it is tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, celery, flour, butter, pepper, port wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, celery, flour, butter, pepper, port 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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