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Braised Oxtail

Braised oxtail with vegetables, brown stock, sherry, and spices, simmered slowly in the oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Braised Oxtail

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the oxtail

  1. Wipe and cut the oxtail into joints, then rinse and wipe it dry.

  2. In a stewpan, cover the oxtail with cold water and add salt; bring to a boil.

  3. Strain and rinse the oxtail again.

Braise

  1. In the same stewpan, melt butter or dripping and add carrot, turnip, onions, celery, peppercorns, white pepper, mace, and cloves.

  2. Place the oxtail on top of the vegetables and fry everything together for 20 minutes.

  3. Add brown stock and sherry, then cover and place in a 300°F (150°C) oven.

  4. Cook gently for 3 hours, basting every 20 minutes and adding boiling water as needed.

  5. Remove the oxtail and strain the gravy over it before serving.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Oxtail
Provides the meat and gelatin-rich body that becomes tender during slow braising.
Butter or dripping
Fat that frying the vegetables and oxtail in carries flavor and encourages browning.
Onions
Sweetness and savory depth as they soften and brown in the stewpan.
Brown stock
Liquid base that builds the gravy's savory flavor during the long cook.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the braising liquid and gravy.

The step that matters

Cook gently for 3 hours. Low, slow heat with a covered pan lets collagen in the oxtail break down into gelatin, making the meat tender. Boiling hard would toughen the meat and dry out the liquid, so basting and adding water keeps it moist.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, mace, clove):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, mace, clove. 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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