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Ox Tail a LA Biatelote

A stew of ox tail, onions, wine, herbs, anchovy, and capers, served with fried bread.

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 Biatelote

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oxtail

  1. Blanch the ox tail pieces in boiling water.

  2. Transfer to fresh water and parboil.

Make the sauce and stew

  1. In a pan, melt butter and stir in flour, adding some of the boiling liquid to moisten.

  2. Add the ox 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 as needed.

  5. Stir in the chopped anchovy and capers.

Serve

  1. Arrange the ox tail 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and rich through long, gentle stewing.
Flour
Thickens the butter-based sauce so it clings to the meat and onions.
Butter
Carries the flour for the sauce base and adds richness.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the heavy, fatty stew.
Whole onions
Soften during stewing, becoming sweet and tender alongside the meat.
Anchovy
Adds a savory, salty depth to the sauce that is not fishy when cooked.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the meat and onions are tender. Oxtail is rich in connective tissue that breaks down into gelatin only with long, low, gentle heat. A rapid boil toughens the meat and can make the sauce cloudy or greasy.

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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