No. 1655

Sheep's Tails with Olives

Queues de Mouton aux Olives

Suppress the thin ends of eight tails previously parboiled; put them into a saucepan with half a pound of lard, two onions and a half minced carrot; fry the whole together, seasoning well, and when they are a nice color, dredge over with two ounces of flour; moisten with hot stock (No. 194a) and white wine. Boil the liquid for ten minutes, then remove it to the side of the range or else set it in the oven until the tails are cooked; strain the sauce through a sieve, skim the fat off carefully, and add to it a quarter of a pint of white wine; reduce until properly thickened. Pare the tails, lay them in the sauce to heat and add some stoned Spanish olives; a few minutes later, serve on a very hot dish and surround with the garnishing of olives, puree of potatoes (No. 725) or risot (No. 739).

← No. 1654 Shoulder of Mutton with Turnips Mutton No. 1656 Mutton Tendons with Mushrooms →

For the Modern Kitchen

A straightforward brown braise, but the original assumes a butcher who breaks whole sheep and a range with a cool corner. The key point is that the tails need long, low, moist cooking until the connective tissue collapses.

Sourcing the tailsLamb or mutton tails are sold by halal and Middle Eastern butchers, and occasionally by whole-animal farm butchers, usually frozen. Sizes vary widely, so weigh what you get rather than trusting a count; oxtail cut into sections is a workable substitute if tails are unobtainable.
"Suppress the thin ends"Ranhofer means cut off and discard the tapered tip, which is mostly skin and small vertebrae. Parboiling first, as directed, firms the meat and rids it of scum so the braising liquid stays clean.
Half a pound of lardAn 1890s professional quantity meant for a wide brazier. Two to three tablespoons of lard or neutral oil is enough to brown the tails in batches in a heavy Dutch oven; excess fat will only be skimmed off later anyway.
The moistening is unmeasuredThe original gives no volume for the stock and wine. Add enough hot stock, with about a cup of dry white wine, to come two-thirds up the tails, no more; a covered braise loses little liquid and you want a sauce, not soup.
Oven temperature"The side of the range" is a bare simmer, no bubbling. In an oven that is 300-325F, covered, for 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours, until the meat pulls from the bone without falling apart.
A quarter of a pint of wineHalf a cup, added to the strained sauce and reduced. Raw wine at this stage needs several minutes of boiling to lose its sharpness before the sauce is judged for thickness.
Skim before you reduceTails are very fatty. Let the strained liquid settle and lift the fat, or chill it and take the cap off cleanly; reducing an unskimmed sauce gives a greasy, broken result no amount of seasoning fixes.
Olives and salt"Spanish olives" in this period means green olives in brine, Manzanilla or Queen among them. Rinse them, add them only at the end, and salt the sauce after they go in, since they carry a great deal of salt of their own.
Cross-references and yieldCross-references -- No. 725 is potato puree and "risot" (No. 739) is risotto, either of which serves as the bed. Ranhofer gives no serving count.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after some three decades as chef of Delmonico's in New York, and its mutton chapter is a catalogue of the whole animal: shoulder, tendons, trotters, tongues, tails. Tails were valued in nineteenth-century French kitchens for exactly the reason they are cheap now, being nearly all gelatin and connective tissue, which gives a braising sauce a body no cut of lean meat can match. The pairing with green olives points at the Spanish and Provencal side of the classical repertoire, where brine and oil cut through fatty stewed meat; the same logic produces oxtail with olives and the various daubes aux olives of the Midi. That a Fifth Avenue restaurant listed sheep's tails at all is a reminder that fine dining in the period ran on thrift as much as on luxury, and that the modern narrowing of butchery to a handful of prime cuts is recent.