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Ox Tail Jardiniere

A stew of ox tails simmered with onions, carrots, turnips, cloves, mace, bay leaf, thyme, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox Tail Jardiniere

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and braise the ox tails

  1. Cut the ox tails into 1-inch thick pieces.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the ox tails, onions, carrot, turnip, cloves, mace, bay leaf, thyme, and salt. Cover with stock or water and simmer until the tails are tender and the meat separates from the bone.

Glaze the vegetables

  1. In another stewpan, melt the butter and add the carrots, turnips, and tiny onions with the powdered sugar. Cook over high heat for about 10 minutes, tossing occasionally.

  2. Add the white stock and simmer until the vegetables are tender.

Combine and serve

  1. Remove the ox tails from the stewpan, drain, and add them to the vegetable mixture.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and port wine if desired, then serve.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 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 tails
Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and rich in body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour into the glazed vegetables.
Powdered sugar
Browns and caramelises the vegetable surfaces over high heat, adding sweetness.
Carrots
Hold their shape through cooking while adding sweetness and body to the stew.

The step that matters

Cooking the vegetables over high heat. Sugar and butter brown quickly at high heat, so the vegetables can scorch before they become tender. Tossing them often and then adding stock to finish the cooking keeps the glaze even and prevents burning.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, turnip, clove, thyme, butter, sugar. 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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