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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) · 12 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

  1. Divide the ox-tails at the joints and wash them.

  2. Place the tails in a stewpan and cover with water; bring to a boil.

  3. Remove any scum that forms, then add the onion cut into rings, spices, seasoning, and herbs.

Stew

  1. Cover the stewpan and simmer gently for about 2½ hours until tender.

Thicken and serve

  1. Remove the tails and make a thickening with butter and flour; add it to the gravy and boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the gravy into a saucepan, return the tails, and add lemon juice and mushroom catsup.

  3. Bring to a boil and 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
Provide the meat and collagen that become tender and enrich the gravy during long simmering.
Butter and flour
Form a roux-style thickening that gives the gravy body and a smooth, glossy texture.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aromatic sweetness to the stewing liquid as it cooks down.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty gravy and balances its savory flavor.
Mushroom catsup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavor that deepens the color and taste of the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmering gently until tender. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the tails slowly break down into gelatin, making the meat tender and the gravy silky. A hard boil toughens the meat and can make the liquid cloudy and greasy.

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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