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Ox Tail, Simple Mode of Cooking
Take a fresh ox tail, joint it, and cut it into pieces about two inches long. Roll the pieces in flour, place them side by side in a baking-dish, and sprinkle over them a little pepper and salt, a finely-minced onion, and a table-spoonful of chopped parsley. Pour a pint of stock or water upon them, and bake in a moderate oven. Serve on a hot dish with the gravy upon them. Time to bake, three hours and a half. Probable cost of ox tail, 1s. to 2s. Sufficient for three persons.
A plain covered braise that needs almost no updating beyond a real oven temperature and a lid. The long time is not a misprint — oxtail is all collagen and connective tissue, and three and a half hours is about what it takes to turn that into gelatine.
- Oven temperatureA "moderate oven" in Victorian and Edwardian usage is roughly 350F/180C. For a braise this long, 325F/160C is the safer reading — you want a bare simmer in the dish, not a boil.
- Cover the dishThe recipe does not say to cover, but a pint of liquid will not survive three and a half hours uncovered. Use a lid or foil, and take it off for the last twenty minutes if you want the top pieces browned.
- Buy it jointedOxtail is sold cut into rounds at the natural joints. Cutting it yourself means sawing through vertebrae; ask the butcher. "About two inches long" describes the thicker top-end pieces — the tip sections are naturally smaller and cook faster.
- The flour coatingRolling the pieces in flour is what thickens the gravy. Season the flour rather than sprinkling pepper and salt over the top, and shake off the excess or the sauce turns pasty.
- Stock or waterWater will work because oxtail makes its own stock, but a pint of beef stock gives a far better gravy. One imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so about 2½ US cups.
- Degrease before servingOxtail is fatty, and this method gives no chance to skim. Cooking it the day before and lifting the set fat off the cold gravy is the single biggest improvement to the finished dish; the meat is also better for the rest.
- Cost and yield"1s. to 2s." is one to two shillings, when oxtail was cheap offal rather than the sought-after cut it is now. Three portions is honest — one tail serves three people generously, with a good deal of bone on each plate.
Oxtail belongs to the fifth quarter — the offal, extremities and trimmings that went cheap because the prime joints went elsewhere. It is often said to have entered English cooking in quantity through the London trade, and is traditionally associated with the city's soup houses and with Huguenot and Jewish butchery practice, which made better use of the parts wealthier buyers passed over, though this is repeated tradition rather than documented history. The version demonstrates the point of a slow oven: a cut that is inedible when cooked fast becomes rich and tender when left alone for hours, and the collagen that makes it tough is the same substance that gives the gravy its body. The recipe is deliberately artless — no wine, no browning, one onion and some parsley — which marks it as a household economy dish rather than the elaborated oxtail ragouts that appear elsewhere in the same period.