Skip to main content
Main

Ox Tail, Simple Mode of Cooking

A baked ox tail dish with flour coating, onion, parsley, and stock, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Ox Tail, Simple Mode of Cooking

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Joint the ox tail and cut it into pieces about 2 inches long.

  2. Roll the pieces in flour and place them side by side in a baking dish.

Season and bake

  1. Sprinkle with pepper, salt, minced onion, and chopped parsley.

  2. Pour stock or water over the pieces.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 3.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish with the gravy.

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

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tail
Provides the main meat and, with slow cooking, gelatin that enriches the gravy.
Flour
Coats the pieces, helping the surface brown and thickening the gravy slightly.
Onion
Adds aroma and savoury sweetness as it softens in the liquid during baking.
Stock or water
Provides the cooking liquid that gently braises the meat and forms the gravy.

The step that matters

Baking at a moderate oven for the full time. Oxtail is tough connective tissue. Slow, moist heat over a long period is needed to break down collagen into gelatin, so stopping early leaves the meat chewy.

Swap the onion

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

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

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