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Ox Tail, with Piquant Sauce

A stew of ox tail simmered with onions, carrots, herbs, and a piquant sauce of sherry, cayenne, and gherkins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Ox Tail, with Piquant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox tail

  1. Disjoint the ox tail and cut it into 2-inch pieces.

  2. Boil the pieces in water for 15 minutes, then soak them in cold water for 45 minutes.

  3. Drain the pieces and wipe them with a soft cloth.

Make the stew

  1. Place the pieces in a saucepan and cover with stock or water.

  2. Bring to a boil, removing any scum that rises.

  3. Add sliced onions, carrots, garlic, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, cloves, salt, and pepper.

  4. Simmer gently until the meat is tender and easily separates from the bones.

  5. Carefully lift out the meat and strain the sauce.

  6. Stir in sherry or Madeira, cayenne, button onions, lemon juice, gherkins, and brown thickening.

  7. Return the meat to the sauce and simmer for an additional 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat piled in the center of a hot dish with gravy poured over.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tail
Provides the meat and gelatin-rich connective tissue that becomes tender and gives the sauce body.
Onions
Break down during simmering to add sweetness and flavour to the sauce.
Carrots
Release natural sugars during simmering, adding sweetness and rounding the sauce.
Sherry or madeira
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Brown thickening
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat.
Pickled gherkins
Add sharp acidity and a piquant bite that suits the sauce.

The step that matters

Soak and then simmer gently after boiling. Boiling the meat hard makes it tough and cloudy, while a gentle simmer lets collagen slowly break down into gelatin so the meat becomes tender without falling apart. Skimming scum as it rises keeps the sauce clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, garlic, parsley, thyme, clove, pepper, sherry):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, garlic, parsley, thyme, clove, pepper, sherry. 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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