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Ox Tail a LA Matelote

A braised ox tail stew with onions, wine, herbs, anchovy, capers, and fried bread garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Ox Tail a LA Matelote

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tail

  1. Blanch the ox tail pieces in boiling water, then transfer to fresh water and parboil until partially cooked.

Make the sauce and stew

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour, adding some of the cooking liquid to create a sauce.

  2. Add the parboiled tail pieces and whole onions to the sauce.

  3. Pour in the white wine and add parsley, chives, garlic, bay leaf, basil, thyme, cloves, salt, and pepper.

  4. Stew gently until the meat and onions are tender, skimming the surface as needed.

  5. Stir in the chopped anchovy and capers.

Serve

  1. Arrange the tail pieces in the center of a serving dish, surround with onions, and garnish with fried bread.

  2. Pour the strained sauce over the dish 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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Chive + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tail
Slow stewing turns the connective tissue tender and gives the meat body and richness.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness to the sauce base.
Whole onions
Soften during stewing and turn sweet, adding flavour and body to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, slow-cooked sauce.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth, melting into the sauce and boosting its umami.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the meat and onions are tender. Boiling rather than simmering toughens the meat and can break the sauce apart. A gentle heat lets collagen in the tail slowly break down into gelatin, so the meat becomes tender and the sauce turns silky.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, onion, white wine, parsley, chive, garlic):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, onion, white wine, parsley, chive, garlic. 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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