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Sleived Ox-tails

A stewed dish of ox-tail joints simmered in stock with carrots, turnips, and onions, served with their sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sleived Ox-tails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox-tails

  1. Wash the ox-tails and cut them into joints.

  2. Boil the joints in water for 10 minutes, then drain and trim them.

  3. In a stewpan, combine the ox-tails, carrot, onion with cloves, parsley, mace, celery seeds, peppercorns, salt, and stock or water.

Make the stew

  1. Bring to a boil, skim the surface, cover, and simmer gently for 2 hours until tender.

  2. Pour off the gravy into a basin surrounded by cold water to remove the fat.

  3. Prepare the carrots, turnips, and onions, then strain the stock and add the vegetables.

  4. Season with pepper and salt, and boil until the vegetables are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the ox-tails to a clean stewpan with the vegetables.

  2. Skim the sauce and thicken if necessary, then pour over the ox-tails.

  3. Simmer for 10 minutes and serve neatly arranged in a hot dish.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tails
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and giving the stew body.
Onions
Break down during cooking to add sweetness and savory depth to the stock.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and firm texture that holds up during long simmering.
Turnips
Contribute a mild, slightly peppery flavor and firm chunks to the stew.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface after boiling. Scum and fat rising during the initial boil cloud the broth and taste greasy, so skimming keeps the stock clear and clean-flavored.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, clove, parsley, celery, turnip, pepper. 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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