No. 1321

Oxtails a la Chipolata

Queues de Boeuf a la Chipolata

Prepare and cook the oxtails the same as indicated in oxtails a la castellane (No. 1320), glaze them with meat glaze, dish them, garnishing around with broiled sausages a la Chipolata (No. 754), some braised salt pork cut in squares, some small glazed onions (No. 2765), balls of carrots, whole chestnuts, celery roots cut in cloves of garlic form, and some mushroom heads; the vegetables blanched and cooked separately in the oxtail broth. Pour over this same broth free of all its fat, and reduce with espagnole sauce (No. 414), and Madeira.

Beef

← No. 1320 Oxtails a la Castellane Beef No. 1322 Oxtails Alsatian Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a finishing recipe: the oxtails themselves are cooked by the preceding entry, and nearly every element points elsewhere in the book. Read it as an assembly plan for a braise you already have going.

The braise comes firstOxtails need long, wet, gentle cooking, until the meat gives at the bone but still holds on it. The recipe sets no time or temperature of its own and sends you back to No. 1320; expect several hours at a bare simmer. Everything else here is garnish hung on that one operation, so do not shorten it.
Keep the broth, it is the sauceThe braising liquid does triple duty: the vegetables are blanched then finished in it, and it is degreased and reduced for the sauce. Chill it if you have time and lift the fat off solid; a greasy reduction will never glaze.
Espagnole, in practiceNo. 414 is a long-cooked brown sauce built on brown roux and veal stock, a day's work in itself. A well-reduced brown veal stock, or the oxtail liquid reduced to a light syrup and mounted with butter, gives the same body. Add the Madeira at the end so it does not cook flat.
Chipolata sausagesSmall, thin fresh pork sausages, coarsely ground and lightly seasoned — not the cured Spanish chorizo-style link. Any small fresh breakfast-size sausage works; broil or pan-brown them and add at the last moment.
Salt porkSalt pork varies a great deal in saltiness. Blanch the cubes in unsalted water for 5 to 10 minutes, drain, then braise, or the finished sauce may come out too salty.
ChestnutsWhole peeled chestnuts, cooked just until tender and no further — they collapse into mush quickly. Vacuum-packed peeled chestnuts are entirely adequate and save an hour of scoring and peeling.
"Cloves of garlic form"This describes a shape, not an ingredient: celery root cut into small pointed segments the size and outline of a garlic clove. Turned carrot barrels, or the "balls" called for, are the same idea — uniform pieces that cook evenly and read as deliberate on the plate.
GlazingMeat glaze is stock reduced to a sticky, near-solid concentrate. Brush it on the drained tails and let it set for a minute; a spoonful stirred into the reduced sauce will also give it the gloss the recipe assumes.
YieldThe recipe gives no quantities. Oxtail is largely bone, so scale accordingly; the vegetables and sausage are substantial, so a lighter first course suits it.

A Little History

Chipolata is generally traced to the Italian cipollata, an onion dish, and by the nineteenth century it had settled in French kitchens as a fixed garnish: glazed onions, chestnuts, small sausages, braised salt pork, and turned root vegetables, bound with a Madeira-scented brown sauce. It is a cold-weather set, and it shares its name with the sausages. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894, organised the book exactly as this entry shows — a spine of numbered garnishes, sauces and vegetable preparations that the meat recipes call on by number, which is how a brigade cooked from a standing repertoire rather than from a page. That oxtail, a cheap cut, is dressed up here with chestnuts, Madeira and espagnole is characteristic of the period's grand restaurant cooking, where labour was plentiful and no part of the animal was beneath a French name.