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Haricot of Ox Tails

A stew of ox tails cooked with herbs, ham, mace, cloves, vegetables, and brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Haricot of Ox Tails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tails

  1. Joint the ox tails, using larger ends for the dish.

  2. Blanch the tails for a few minutes, then place them in a clean stewpan.

Make the stew

  1. Cover the tails with second stock and add the sweet herbs, ham, mace, and cloves.

  2. Cook until tender, then remove the tails and thicken the liquid.

  3. Stir in a little brown sauce.

  4. Prepare the vegetables and add them to the sauce, which should be strained.

  5. Boil everything together for 10 minutes and season with sugar, salt, and pepper.

  6. Glaze the ox tails 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. Turnip + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together226 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + carrottop 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
Provide the meat and gelatinous body that gives the stew its rich texture.
Second stock
Supplies the liquid that cooks the tails and forms the base of the sauce.
Brown sauce
Adds body, colour and savoury depth to the thickened liquid.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour to the stew as they cook.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and a soft texture to the stew.
Button onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften in the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook until tender, then remove the tails and thicken the liquid.. Ox tail is tough connective tissue that needs long, gentle simmering to break down collagen into gelatin. Removing the tails before thickening keeps the meat intact while the liquid reduces to a sauce.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, clove, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, cucumber. 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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