Oxtail Soup
2 Oxtails 1 Cup Water 2 Tablespoons Butter 3 Quarts Boiling Water 1 Teaspoon Salt 3 Carrots 2 Turnips 3 Onions 1 Head Celery 1 Bay Leaf 4 Cloves 4 Peppercorns 1 Teaspoon Yellow Corn Syrup 2 Slices Ham Cut the tails into joints, wash and stew with the cup of water and butter, stirring all the time. Cook till juice is drawn from the meat. Fill up with the hot water, add the salt, boil up and skim. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer four hours. Take out the tails, strain, season with a little ketchup and thicken with cornstarch made smooth with cold water. Put back the tails and cook five minutes.
A long-simmered stock soup that depends almost entirely on the first ten minutes: the oxtails must give up their juices and brown in the butter before any water goes in. Everything after that is patience.
- The hinge: draw the juice, then brownThe hinge: draw the juice -- "Cook till juice is drawn from the meat" means stewing the tails in the cup of water and butter, stirring, until the meat has given up its juices; the recipe does not call for colouring or browning, though the water will reduce as it goes. Adding the three quarts too early gives you a pale, thin broth.
- Buying oxtailsTwo oxtails is roughly 4-6 lb depending on size, and they are often sold already cut into joints. If yours come whole, cut between the vertebrae rather than through them.
- A head of celeryIn this period that means the whole bunch, not a single rib. Leaves and all go in; they carry much of the flavour.
- Vegetables go in whole or halvedThey are strained out after four hours, so there is no point in fine dicing. Halve the turnips, quarter the onions, and leave carrots in large lengths.
- The teaspoon of corn syrupIt reads as a colouring and rounding agent rather than a sweetener, and may be doing the job older recipes gave to burnt sugar or bottled browning, though the recipe does not say so. Omitting it changes little beyond the shade of the broth.
- Two slices of hamCured, not fresh, and used as a seasoning meat. A thick slice of country ham or a piece of unsmoked bacon does the same work; account for its salt before adding more.
- Skim, then chillOxtail is fatty. Skimming during the boil-up removes some, but the cleanest result comes from straining the broth, refrigerating it, and lifting the solid cap of fat before finishing.
- The thickening is unmeasuredNo quantity is given for the cornstarch. About 2 tablespoons slaked in cold water will lightly body the strained broth (less than the three quarts of water you started with, after four hours' simmering); add it in stages and stop when it coats a spoon, since it thickens further as it stands.
- YieldNo yield is stated; the liquid quantities suggest something in the region of eight first-course servings, or six as a main with bread. It reheats better than it keeps warm.
Oxtail soup belongs to the long European tradition of extracting good eating from the parts nobody wanted, and its rise in English cookery is popularly traced to the eighteenth century, when the tails left over from the hide and tallow trades are said to have been sold cheaply in London. By the nineteenth century it had climbed the social ladder entirely: clear oxtail appeared on hotel menus and in tinned form, and a thickened, ham-scented version like this one was standard first-course fare. The teaspoon of corn syrup and the spoonful of ketchup are small commercial shortcuts to the deep brown that an older cook would have coaxed from burnt sugar and a longer reduction.