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Ox Joints En Casserole
Separate ox-tails at joints, parboil five minutes; then rinse thoroughly. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and dredge with flour. Melt one-fourth cup butter in frying pan, add three slices onion and joints, sauté until joints are well browned. Remove joints and onion; to fat add one-fourth cup flour, brown slightly, stirring constantly. Add slowly two cups of Brown Stock, or water and a large can of tomatoes. Add one-half tablespoon salt and one-fourth teaspoon pepper. Turn into an earthen casserole, or Dutch oven, cover, place in oven and simmer slowly three to four hours. Add more moisture if necessary. Remove joints, strain liquor, return joints to liquor, add one cup each carrot and turnip cut in straws and parboiled in boiling, salted water ten minutes, and set in oven to complete cooking. Serve in Casserole or in a deep platter surrounded with a border of boiled rice.
A straightforward braise that needs little translation, though the vessel language and the browning stage repay attention.
- "En casserole" hereIn 1900 a casserole meant the lidded earthenware pot itself, not a baked layered dish. Any heavy Dutch oven or covered braiser holds the same purpose, and the recipe says so.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature, only 'simmer slowly.' A low oven, in the region of 300-325F, is a reasonable modern equivalent. The liquid should barely move; a hard boil over three to four hours will shred the meat off the bone and cloud the sauce.
- Buy oxtail already cutButchers and most supermarkets sell oxtail cross-cut at the joints, which saves the work of separating them. Figure 3 to 4 lb for four to six people, since the bone-to-meat ratio is high.
- The parboilFive minutes in boiling water and a rinse removes surface scum so the finished sauce stays clear. Dry the pieces well afterward or they will steam rather than brown in the butter.
- Browning is the flavorThis is the hinge. The joints want deep color on all sides and the roux a real nut-brown before the stock goes in; a pale sear gives a thin, greyish gravy no amount of simmering will fix.
- "A large can of tomatoes"Can sizes were not standardized in this period, so the quantity is approximate; a modern 28 oz can is a workable stand-in. Used with water in place of brown stock it makes the dish noticeably more acidic and lighter in body.
- Skim before finishingOxtail renders a great deal of fat. Straining the liquor is in the recipe; letting it settle a few minutes and spooning off the fat cap before returning the joints makes a considerable difference.
- The vegetablesCarrot and turnip cut in straws and parboiled ten minutes need only 15 to 20 minutes back in the oven. Add them any earlier and they collapse.
- Make it a day aheadOxtail improves overnight and the fat lifts off solid from the cold pot. Reheat gently and add the root vegetables at that point.
Oxtail was cheap meat, and cookbooks of this period treat it as a thrifty Sunday dish that trades money for time — three to four hours of low oven heat turning tendon and collagen into gelatin. The French dressing of the title reflects the vogue for casserole cookery in American middle-class kitchens around 1900, when glazed earthenware pots that could go from oven to table were newly fashionable and recipe writers borrowed the French term wholesale. The dish itself has older, plainer relatives: oxtail soup was a staple of British cookery well before this. The rice border catches a dish with a lot of sauce and not much substance to it, and would have arrived at table molded into a ring or spooned into a neat rim around a deep platter.