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Ox Tail, Breaded and Broiled
This is an excellent way of serving the remains of stewed ox tails. If made with fresh meat, joint and cut up the tails, put them into boiling water, and let them simmer for a quarter of an hour, then soak them in cold water for one hour. Take them up, drain them, and put them into a saucepan with as much broth or water as will cover them, and let them stew until tender; then lift them out carefully, and when they are cold season them with pepper and salt, and sprinkle over them a little finely-minced parsley and shallot. Dip them in egg and bread-crumbs, then in clarified butter, and again in egg and bread-crumbs, and broil on a gridiron until they are brightly browned all over; or, if more convenient, place them in a dripping-tin with a little clarified butter, and let them bake until they are brightly browned. They may be dished on mashed spinach, mashed potatoes, or stewed cabbage, or, if preferred, served without vegetables, with piquant sauce, tomato sauce, shallot gravy, or Tartar sauce, in a tureen. Time, about two hours to stew the tails; three or four minutes to broil them; twenty minutes to bake them. Probable cost, from 1s. to 2s. each. Sufficient, two tails for five or six persons.
A leftovers dish that works just as well from scratch, provided you give the tails far longer than the book allows. The two coatings of egg and crumb, with butter between them, are what produce the crust — do not shortcut to one.
- Stewing time"About two hours" is optimistic for oxtail; modern cuts from larger cattle usually need 3 to 4 hours at a bare simmer before the meat yields at the bone. Test by twisting a joint: it should turn freely.
- The blanch and soakThe 15-minute boil then hour in cold water draws out scum and blood and firms the meat so the pieces hold their shape through the long stew. It is not strictly necessary if you skim carefully, but it does give a cleaner-tasting broth — keep that broth for the sauce.
- Chill before breadingThis is the hinge. The pieces must be completely cold and dry before coating or the crumbs will slide off the gelatinous surface. An hour uncovered in the fridge is better than the recipe's vague "when they are cold."
- Double coatingEgg and crumbs, then clarified butter, then egg and crumbs again. The butter layer sits between the two crusts and effectively fries them from the inside; skip it and the result is dry.
- GridironA gridiron is a grate over live coals. Use a hot overhead broiler about 4 inches from the element, or a ridged grill pan -- the book allows three or four minutes in all, and breadcrumbs over butter catch quickly, so watch closely.
- Oven optionThe book gives no temperature. Twenty minutes to brown breadcrumbs indicates a hot oven, around 400 to 425F, in a shallow tin with the butter already melted.
- Clarified butterButter with the milk solids and water removed, so it takes higher heat without burning. Ghee is closely related and sold ready-made, though it is cooked longer so the solids brown, giving a nuttier flavour.
- Shallot gravy and piquant sauceBoth are brown sauces: piquant sauce is finished with vinegar, capers and gherkin, shallot gravy with chopped shallot reduced in vinegar. The book does not say what to base them on, but the reduced stewing broth would serve for either.
- YieldTwo tails for five or six is generous by Victorian standards of a multi-course meal; treated as a main course with potatoes, reckon two tails for three or four.
Oxtail is a classic example of Victorian thrift dressed up for the table — a cheap cut from the slaughterhouse, sold by the piece and treated as offal, turned respectable by long stewing and a crumb crust. Cassell's frames the dish first as a use for "the remains of stewed ox tails," which tells you how the book expects its readers to cook: yesterday's stew, boned or not, re-egged and crumbed and browned. The technique of coating cooked meat in egg and breadcrumbs and grilling it is the same one behind devilled bones and grilled kidneys, dishes of the same era and the same logic. The listed price of a shilling to two shillings each for a tail places it well below a joint of beef; the popularity of oxtail soup in nineteenth-century London kept the cut in steady demand, and it became expensive in Britain only much later — oxtail was caught by the UK beef-on-the-bone restrictions of the late 1990s, though that was not the sole reason for its later price.