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Ox Tail, with Matelote Sauce
Take a large fresh ox tail, disjoint it, cut it into pieces two inches long, and blanch these in boiling water for a quarter of an hour; then take them up, drain them, and soak them in cold water for three-quarters of an hour. Put them in a saucepan, cover them with broth or water, bring them to the boil, then simmer them gently for two hours. Take them up, strain the sauce, thicken three-quarters of a pint of it with a dessert-spoonful of flour and a little butter, add a dozen and a half of small fried onions, and a dozen button mushrooms (or, as a substitute, a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup), a bunch of parsley, a small sprig of thyme and basil, a bay-leaf, and a little salt and pepper. Stew gently and skim carefully until the meat will part easily from the bones. Then add a pounded anchovy, a little grated nutmeg, and a glassful of claret. Boil up again, and serve the ox tail piled in the centre of a hot dish; garnish with toasted sippets, and strain the sauce over all. Time altogether, three hours and a half to stew the ox tail. Sufficient for three persons. Probable cost of ox tail, from 1s. 6d. to 4s.
A long braise with a fortified red-wine sauce, written for a coal range but entirely at home on a modern hob. The only real work is the initial blanching and the patience the collagen demands.
- The hinge: cook it until it givesThree and a half hours is the book's estimate, not a rule. Oxtail is done when the meat slips from the bone with no resistance, which on a modern hob often means four hours or more; check at three and keep going if it still clings.
- Blanch, then chillThe quarter-hour boil and the three-quarter-hour cold soak firm the meat and draw out blood, giving a clear sauce. It is not decorative — skip it and you will be skimming grey scum for an hour.
- UnitsThree-quarters of a pint is 15 fl oz in imperial measure, so roughly 1\ (about 425 ml). A dessert-spoonful is about 2 teaspoons; a "glassful" of claret means a wineglassful, which Victorian cookery books generally reckoned at around 2 fl oz, though usage varied.
- ClaretSimply dry red Bordeaux, or any dry, moderately tannic red. Added at the end it stays bright rather than stewed, but give it a full boil to blow off the raw alcohol.
- Matelote sauceA matelote is a fisherman's red-wine stew, and its sauce signature is the trio of small onions, button mushrooms and a red-wine reduction, sharpened with anchovy. The pounded anchovy dissolves entirely and reads as depth, not fish.
- Mushroom ketchupThe Victorian pantry staple was a thin, salty mushroom extract, not a sweet tomato sauce. Modern mushroom ketchup is still sold; a teaspoon of soy or a dash of Worcestershire gets close if you cannot find it.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of toasted or fried bread, set around the edge of the dish. Fry them in butter and add them at the table, or they soften into the sauce.
- Fat and yieldOxtail throws a great deal of fat. Chill the strained cooking liquid briefly and lift the cap before thickening, or the finished sauce will be greasy. Three servings is honest if the tail is large; two tails feed four generously.
Matelote takes its name from the French matelot, sailor, and properly describes a freshwater fish stew — eel, carp, pike — simmered in red wine with onions and mushrooms. By the nineteenth century English cookery had detached the garnish from the fish and applied "matelote sauce" to anything braised in red wine with button onions, mushrooms and anchovy, which is exactly what happens here. Oxtail was cheap offal, and the book's readers were being shown how a butcher's leftover, given three and a half hours and a glass of claret, could be sent to table looking like a dish from a restaurant kitchen. The anchovy is the period's habit rather than an oddity — pounded anchovy or anchovy essence stood in for the savoury depth a modern cook would reach for in stock concentrate or fish sauce.