Home › The Principles of Cookery › OX TAILS (a la Saint Lambert)
OX TAILS (a la Saint Lambert)
Scald the tails in hot water, disjoint them, and put them into a saucepan with some slices of bacon, two carrots, two turnips, a head of celery, two onions, a bunch of mixed herbs, salt and pepper, and sufficient water to cover. When boiled tender take out the tails, remove the bunch of herbs, strain the liquor, make a puree of the vegetables by passing them through a sieve and adding them to the liquor; pour the whole over the tails, and serve. Probable cost, 1s. to 2s. each, according to size.
A straightforward braise whose only real technique is the finish: the aromatics become the sauce, so nothing is thrown away but the herb bundle. The original is silent on time, which is the one thing worth pinning down.
- Cooking timeOxtail is heavily collagenous and needs 3 to 4 hours at a bare simmer before the meat pulls from the bone. "Boiled tender" here does not mean a rolling boil; hold the liquid just below one or the pieces will toughen and the liquor will cloud.
- The scaldScalding in hot water rinses off blood and bone dust and firms the surface. Bringing the tails to the boil in fresh water for a few minutes and rinsing them does much the same job and gives a cleaner sauce.
- DisjointingAsk the butcher to cut the tail through the natural joints; supermarket oxtail is usually sold already sectioned. Sawn-through vertebrae shed bone splinters into the sauce.
- QuantitiesThe vegetable list suits about two tails, serving four. Water "sufficient to cover" means exactly that and no more in a snug pot, since the liquor becomes the sauce rather than being discarded.
- The baconMost likely fat bacon or salt pork, used as fat and seasoning rather than as a meat. Two or three thick slices are enough; heavily smoked modern streaky bacon will dominate the finished purée.
- SaltSeason lightly at the start. The bacon carries salt of its own, so correct the seasoning only at the end.
- Degrease before saucingOxtail throws a great deal of fat. Lift out the tails, let the strained liquor settle a few minutes and skim, or chill it until the fat caps -- otherwise the vegetable purée will break into a greasy slick.
- The puréeA sieve and wooden spoon was the period tool; a food mill or a short burst with a stick blender does the same. Keep the celery out of the purée if you want a smooth sauce, as its fibres will not pass cleanly.
- Cost"1s. to 2s. each" is one to two shillings per tail, a modest price for the period. Oxtail is no longer cheap, being in demand for exactly this kind of braise.
The suffix à la Saint-Lambert belongs to the vocabulary of nineteenth-century French garnishes that English cookery books borrowed wholesale, and it is often said to indicate a dressing of root vegetables -- carrot and turnip above all -- served with or worked into the sauce, though the classical garnish lists are not consistent on the point. Cassell's, published for middle-class households that wanted French-sounding names on modest cuts, is full of such borrowings. Oxtail was the natural candidate: it came from the slaughterhouse rather than the butcher's front counter, and rewarded long unattended simmering on a range that was lit all day anyway. The finish is a genuinely economical piece of technique, thickening the sauce with the braising vegetables instead of a roux, and it survives in the same form in oxtail soup, the other great Victorian use for the cut.