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Stewed Ox-tails

A slow‑cooked stew of ox tails with onion, spices, savory herbs, thickened with butter and flour, finished with lemon juice and mushroom catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stewed Ox-tails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox-tails

  1. Divide the ox-tails at the joints.

  2. Wash the ox-tails.

  3. Place the ox-tails in a stewpan.

  4. Cover the stewpan with sufficient water.

Stew

  1. Bring the stew to a boil.

  2. Remove the scum from the surface.

  3. Add the onion rings to the stew.

  4. Add the spices to the stew.

  5. Add the seasoning to the stew.

  6. Add the savory herbs to the stew.

  7. Cover the stewpan.

  8. Simmer gently for about 2.5 hours until the ox-tails are tender.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the ox-tails from the stew.

  2. Make a thickening with butter and flour.

  3. Add the thickening to the gravy.

  4. Boil the gravy for 15 minutes.

  5. Strain the gravy into a saucepan.

  6. Return the ox-tails to the saucepan.

  7. Add the lemon juice to the gravy.

  8. Add the mushroom catsup to the gravy.

  9. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  10. Serve with croutons or toasted bread.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 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-tails
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and enriching the gravy.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the strained gravy, and butter adds richness and smooth body.
Onion
Releases sweetness and aromatic flavour into the stewing liquid as it cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty flavour of the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for about 2.5 hours. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the ox-tails slowly convert to gelatin, giving tender meat and a silky gravy. A hard boil toughens the meat and makes the liquid cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, pepper, allspice, butter, flour, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, pepper, allspice, butter, flour, lemon. 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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