No. 1325

Oxtails with Vegetables

Queues de Boeuf aux Legumes

Prepare and cook the oxtails as explained in a la Hochepot (No. 1324), only adding half a pound more of salt pork. When the meat is cooked, dish it up with the salt pork as garnishing, also carrots, turnips, celery knobs, all blanched and cooked in the broth, and two clusters of braised cabbage. Strain, skim, and reduce the broth so as to have it succulent, then pour some of it over the dish, and send the rest to the table in a sauce-boat.

← No. 1324 Oxtails Hochepot Beef No. 1326 Beef Palates a la Bechamel →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a variation entry rather than a standalone recipe: Ranhofer assumes you have No. 1324 (Oxtails Hochepot) in front of you, and gives only the changes. The whole dish rests on the broth, so treat it as the main product and the vegetables as a garnish cooked in it.

The hinge: cook the oxtail long, then degrease hardOxtail generally needs something like 3 to 3½ hours of gentle simmering or braising at a bare tremble before the meat gives way; rushing it at a rolling boil produces stringy meat and cloudy broth. Ranhofer's "strain, skim, and reduce" is not a flourish — oxtail throws a great deal of fat, and the succulence he wants comes only after that fat is off and the liquid has been reduced; he gives no figure, so reduce until it tastes concentrated.
The extra salt porkThe additional half pound is there to be served as garnish, not just for seasoning. Modern salt pork is variable, so soak it an hour or two in cold water, or blanch it from cold and drain, before adding it — otherwise the reduced broth will be inedibly salty by the time it has concentrated.
Celery knobsCeleriac, sold as celery root. Peel deeply and cut into large regular pieces so they hold together through the blanching and the second cooking in broth.
"Clusters" of braised cabbageCut a firm green or Savoy cabbage into wedges through the core and tie each wedge with kitchen string so it stays intact while braising. Two wedges, matching the two clusters the recipe calls for.
Why blanch the vegetables firstBlanching carrots, turnips and celeriac in water before finishing them in the broth takes the raw edge off the turnip and helps keep the broth clear enough to reduce into a glaze. Skipping it will muddy the sauce you are working so hard to clarify.
Sequence the vegetablesAdd them to the broth in order of density — celeriac and carrot first, turnip next — and lift each out when just tender. Cooked all at once for the same time the turnip will collapse. The cabbage is braised apart, as the recipe has it.
Reduction, not thickeningThere is no flour or roux here. Body comes from the gelatin in the tails, so reduce uncovered until the liquid coats a spoon; if it will not, the initial simmer was too short or too much water was used.
Yield and serviceThe recipe gives no quantities; two large oxtails, jointed, will serve roughly four to six. Serve on a warm deep platter with the meat in the centre, salt pork and vegetables around it, a little sauce spooned over and the rest in a boat, as the original directs — the dish cools fast and the sauce sets.

A Little History

Hochepot — English "hotchpotch" — is a Flemish and northern French dish of tough cuts and root vegetables simmered together in one pot, and Ranhofer's oxtail versions in The Epicurean (1894) are a restaurant reading of that peasant original. Oxtail was cheap, gelatinous offal that nineteenth-century kitchens are often said to have turned into soup; serving it as a garnished platter at Delmonico's, with the broth strained, skimmed and reduced to a glossy sauce and the cabbage tied into neat clusters, is exactly the transformation the book was built on. The pairing of a boiled meat with salt pork and blanched roots also seems to reflect common American and French practice of the period, where the pork supplied both fat and seasoning in place of a stock made separately.