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Ragout of Ox Tails

A hearty stew of ox tails, bacon, carrots, onions, and parsley simmered in a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot 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 ↓

Ragout of Ox Tails

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Rub the butter over the bottom of a stewpan.

  2. Add the ox tail pieces and bacon, and cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally until browned.

  3. Mix in the flour, then add the water and bring to a boil.

Simmer

  1. Once boiling, add the parsley, bay leaves, carrots, and onions.

  2. Season with salt, sugar, and pepper, and let simmer until the tails and vegetables are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the tails and arrange them in a pyramid on a plate of mashed potatoes, garnishing with the vegetables.

  2. Pass the sauce through a sieve into another pan, stir over heat until thickened, then pour over the tails and 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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tails
Provide the meat and gelatin that give the ragout its body and rich flavor.
Butter
Adds fat to start the browning and carries flavor in the pan.
Streaky bacon
Renders fat and savory flavor that builds the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce as it heats.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color, and soften into tender pieces during simmering.
Button onions
Add savory sweetness and soften into the sauce as they cook.

The step that matters

Browning the tails and bacon. Browning over moderate heat creates deep, savory flavors through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat yields a flatter, less rich sauce, so stir until the pieces are evenly colored.

Swap the onion

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

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

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