Home › The Principles of Cookery › Ox Tail Soup, Thick
Ox Tail Soup, Thick
This soup is, of course, much better if made with stock instead of water. If no stock is at hand, two-pennyworth of fresh bones simmered gently with three quarts of water for six hours, and carefully skimmed, will make nearly two quarts of very good stock; or, if preferred, it can be made from Bovril. Take two fine ox tails, wash them, cut them into pieces about an inch long, and divide the thick pieces into four. Put them into a stewpan with two ounces of fresh butter, and fry them until they are brightly browned. Slice some vegetables--two carrots one turnip, two onions, and half a dozen sticks of celery, and fry them in the same butter, and with them two ounces of lean ham cut into dice. Pour over them a quart of water, and stir them over a quick fire for a quarter of an hour; then add two quarts of stock, a bunch of sweet herbs, a bay-leaf, a dessert-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of peppercorns, three cloves, and a lump of sugar. Simmer gently until the meat is tender and parts easily from the bones, then take it out, strain the soup, skim the fat from the top of the liquid, brown it in a saucepan, and mix smoothly with it two ounces of fine flour. Thicken the soup with this, and flavour it with two table-spoonfuls of mushroom ketchup, add the pieces of tail, simmer a quarter of an hour longer, and serve. If preferred, the vegetables may be crushed through a colander, and added to the soup in the form of a puree. A glassful of port may be added or not. Serve fresh rolls with this soup. Time, four hours to simmer the soup. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. per quart. Sufficient for a dozen persons.
A full-bodied brown soup that is really a braise strained and thickened. The instructions are sound; a few of the phrases are Victorian shorthand.
- The confusing thickening step"Skim the fat from the top of the liquid, brown it in a saucepan, and mix smoothly with it two ounces of fine flour" means make a brown roux from the skimmed oxtail fat and about 1/2 cup flour, cooked until nut-coloured, then whisk in the hot soup. It is not the soup that gets browned.
- QuantitiesTwo oxtails today means roughly 4-6 lb of cut sections; ask the butcher to joint them if they come whole. A dessert-spoonful is 2 teaspoons, and "a lump of sugar" is about a teaspoon. Hold back on the salt if you are using commercial stock.
- Two-pennyworth of bonesRead this as 2-3 lb of beef or veal bones, roasted first if you want colour, simmered in 3 quarts of water. Bovril still exists and is a beef extract paste; a spoonful or two in water gives the same idea, though it is salty.
- Heat levelsA "quick fire" is high heat; the 15 minutes of stirring with a quart of water is meant to draw the vegetable and ham flavour into the pan juices before the stock goes in. After that it should never do more than shiver.
- TimingFour hours of gentle simmering is realistic for oxtail, which needs long moist cooking for the collagen to soften. A covered low oven or a pressure cooker will do the same work in less time. The meat should slide from the bone.
- DegreasingOxtail throws an enormous amount of fat. The best result comes from cooking the soup a day ahead and lifting the set fat off cold, keeping a couple of tablespoons back for the roux.
- Mushroom ketchupA thin, dark, salty mushroom-and-spice liquor, not tomato ketchup. Still sold by a few British makers; a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce plus a little soy is the usual stand-in.
- Sweet herbsTypically a bundle of parsley, thyme and marjoram, tied with the bay leaf. Tie the peppercorns and cloves in muslin with it so they come out before straining.
- YieldRoughly 3 quarts or a little less after reduction, serving twelve as a first course. It thickens further on standing and will want loosening with stock when reheated.
Oxtail was a cheap cut for much of the nineteenth century, and it made its way up the social scale precisely because it produced such a rich, gelatinous liquid. By the time this edition of Cassell's was compiled, thick oxtail soup was a fixture of British hotel and club menus. The casual suggestion that the stock "can be made from Bovril" dates the entry: the beef extract was commercialised in the 1880s, and its appearance in a serious cookery book marks the point at which branded convenience products began to be admitted alongside a six-hour bone stock. The mushroom ketchup and port at the end belong to an older tradition, the English habit of finishing brown soups and gravies with a dark, savoury bottled liquor.