Ox-Tails, Stewed
INGREDIENTS for dish for 8 persons.-2 ox-tails, 1 onion, 3 cloves, 1 blade of mace, 1/4 teaspoonful of whole black pepper, teaspoonful of allspice. ½ teaspoonful of salt, a small bunch of savoury herbs, thickening of butter and flour, 1 tablespoonful of lemon-juice, 1 tablespoonful of mushroom ketchup. AVERAGE CosT, 4s. 6d.
Divide the tails at the joints, wash and put them into a stewpan with sufficient water to cover them, and set them on the fire; when the water boils, remove the scum, and add the onion cut into rings, the spice, seasoning and herbs. Cover the stewpan closely, and let the tails simmer very gently until tender, which will be in about 2½ hours. Take them out, make a thickening of butter and flour, add it to the gravy, and let it boil for 1/4 hour. Strain it through a sieve into a saucepan, put back the tails, add the lemon-juice and ketchup; let the whole just boil up, and serve. Garnish with croûtons or sippets of toasted bread.
TIME.-2 hours to stew the tails.
SEASONABLE all the year.
A plain brown oxtail stew whose only real subtlety is patience: the printed two hours is the least you will need, and the dish is far better made a day ahead so the fat can be lifted off cold.
- Cooking timeTwo hours may not bring oxtail to the falling-off-the-bone stage; many cooks reckon on 3 to 3½ hours at a bare simmer. The joint is done when the meat retracts from the bone and shreds under a fork.
- Quantities as printedThe salt is given as ½ teaspoonful, matching the printed page. The allspice is still printed without a numeral, so read it as one teaspoonful. Season to taste at the end, once the liquid has reduced.
- Blade of maceThe dried aril, the lacy covering of the nutmeg seed, sold in strips called blades. Conversions vary, a blade being reckoned at somewhere between ¼ and ½ teaspoon of ground mace, and ground mace will cloud the strained gravy where a whole blade lifts out cleanly.
- Thickening of butter and flourBeurre manié: equal weights of soft butter and plain flour worked to a paste, about 1 oz of each for this quantity, whisked into the simmering liquid in pieces. The quarter-hour boil that follows is not padding, it cooks out the raw flour.
- Skim the fatOxtail renders a great deal of fat and Mrs Beeton says nothing about removing it. Chill the strained gravy and lift the solid cap off, or blot the surface with paper before returning the meat.
- Mushroom ketchupA thin, dark, salty mushroom liquor, not the tomato sauce the word now suggests. It is still made commercially in Britain; a tablespoon of soy sauce with a dash of Worcestershire is the nearest common substitute, and both add salt, so season last.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread toasted or fried in butter, arranged round the rim of the dish. Croûtons here means the same thing at a larger size, not the small cubes sold for salads.
- Yield and servingTwo tails, cut into joints, are generous for four to six rather than the eight claimed, unless the meal runs to several courses. Mashed or boiled potatoes and a plain root vegetable are the usual accompaniment.
Oxtail was for most of the nineteenth century a cheap cut, a by-product of the slaughterhouse sold off with the head and feet, and its appearance in Beeton at 4s 6d for a dish serving eight reflects that. The technique here — long gentle simmering, then straining the liquor and thickening it separately with butter and flour — is the standard English brown stew of the period, and the finishing touches of lemon juice and mushroom ketchup are exactly the sharp-and-savoury correction Victorian cooks used in place of the wine that a French kitchen would have added. Mushroom ketchup itself predates tomato ketchup in Britain by a long way; the word ketchup is generally traced to a Southeast Asian fermented fish sauce whose name travelled to England in the seventeenth century, where it attached to any thin bottled savoury liquid. Oxtail's later fame came through soup rather than stew.