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Ox Tail, Stewed, with Green Peas or Spinach
Stew the ox tail according to the directions given in the last recipe. When the meat is tender, lift it out, strain the gravy, and reduce it to half the quantity. Pour it again over the meat, let it simmer a few minutes, then serve the stew, neatly arranged, in a circle on a hot dish, with green peas or spinach in the centre. Time, three hours and a half to stew the ox tail. Probable cost of ox tails, 1s. 6d. to 4s. each. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A finishing variation rather than a standalone method: the stewing is done in the preceding entry, and this page is about reducing the liquor and plating. A few things need translating.
- The missing first halfThe recipe depends on an earlier entry for the braise itself, which is not reproduced here. A stew of this type would typically mean browning the jointed tail, adding root vegetables, herbs and enough stock or water to cover, then simmering very gently, covered, until the meat pulls from the bone.
- Three and a half hours is rightOxtail is tail vertebrae wrapped in collagen-heavy muscle, and it genuinely needs that long at a bare simmer for the collagen to break down into gelatin. Rushing it at a boil tightens the meat and clouds the liquor. The book asks only for stovetop stewing; a low oven, around 150C/300F, is a modern alternative that needs less watching.
- Straining and reducingThe point of straining is to remove the spent aromatics and to let the fat rise so it can be skimmed. Oxtail throws a great deal of fat; chilling the strained liquor and lifting the solid cap gives a far cleaner sauce than skimming hot.
- Halving the gravyReducing by half is what makes the sauce cling, since the dissolved collagen concentrates into a natural glaze. Season only after reducing, or the finished gravy will be too salty.
- Buying itAsk the butcher for a whole tail cut into joints, thick pieces separated from thin. Supermarket packs are usually pre-cut. As a modern guide, reckon on about 1.5 kg (3 1/4 lb) of tail for four, since the bone-to-meat ratio is high.
- The peas or spinachCook these separately and at the last minute; they are a fresh green foil to a rich brown stew, not part of the braise. Spinach should be wilted, squeezed dry and buttered rather than left wet, or it will thin the gravy on the dish.
- Yield and servingThree or four as written, with bread, mashed potato or plain boiled rice to catch the sauce. Most braises of this kind improve overnight, which also makes the fat easy to remove.
- The cost lineOne shilling and sixpence to four shillings each is Victorian money, and the wide range presumably reflects the size of the tail. The lower end was cheap for the weight, though the upper end was not negligible. Either way, oxtail is no longer a bargain cut in most markets.
Oxtail was through much of the nineteenth century a cheap butcher's cut, and it turns up throughout British cookery books of the period in soups and stews. Cassell's dictionaries of cookery, issued and reissued from the 1870s onwards, are arranged alphabetically and stack variations of a dish one after another, which is why this entry begins by referring back to "the last recipe" rather than repeating the braise. Arranging a stew in a ring on a hot dish with a green vegetable in the centre was a standard way of dressing a dish, and it made a humble cut look deliberate.