No. 294

Calf's Tail a la Rundell

Queue de Veau a la Rundell

Parboil twelve calves' tails, cut them into pieces about one inch long, and fry them in butter with a quarter of a pound of onions, and adding one pound of carrots cut in quarter inch squares, a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme, bay leaf and a clove of garlic. Moisten with four quarts of broth, and allow the liquid to boil and to continue boiling slowly till the tails and vegetables are thoroughly cooked, then remove the bunch of parsley. Cut two medium cabbages in four, plunge them into boiling, salted water, let boil for ten minutes, then drain and cut out the cores and other hard parts; divide each quarter into eight pieces, put them in a saucepan, pour the broth the tails were cooked in over it, let the cabbages boil up once, then finish the cooking in a slack oven for two hours. When ready to serve, lay the cabbages in a soup tureen, add the tails and vegetables, and pour some consomme over; season to taste and serve the soup with thin slices of buttered bread, browned in the oven.

← No. 293 Calf's Feet Soup, English Style Soups & Broths No. 295 Chamberlain Soup →

For the Modern Kitchen

A big braise disguised as a soup: twelve calves' tails, four quarts of broth and two cabbages will fill the largest pot in a domestic kitchen. Scale it by thirds unless you are feeding a crowd.

Calves' tailsVeal tails are hard to find in most modern shops; oxtail is the usual modern stand-in, cut across into 1-inch rounds as here. Beef oxtail is fattier and will generally want a longer gentle simmer than veal tails.
"Slack oven"The coolest working heat of a coal range, conventionally reckoned somewhere around 250-300F. The cabbage is meant to stew slowly in the tail broth for the two hours specified without breaking apart.
Parboiling is not optionalThe first blanch draws out blood and scum; without it the finished consomme goes cloudy and grey. Cover the tails with cold water, bring to a boil, drain, and rinse them before they go into the butter.
Bunch of parsleyThe recipe's bundle is parsley tied with thyme, a bay leaf and a clove of garlic, so that it lifts out in one piece; the recipe duly says to remove it. Tie it with kitchen string rather than fishing for loose leaves later.
Two broths, not oneThe tail broth is reused to cook the cabbage, and then consomme is poured over in the tureen at serving. If you are not keeping a stockpot, hold back a quart of good beef or veal stock for the final moistening.
Skim and degreaseTwelve tails fried in butter release a great deal of fat. Chill the strained tail broth if you can and lift the cap, or skim repeatedly; the dish is meant to read as a clear soup around the vegetables.
Seasoning comes lastThe recipe leaves the final seasoning to the end ("season to taste"), though the cabbage is blanched in salted water along the way. Salting the broth heavily at this volume early risks overshooting.
YieldVery large: four quarts of broth, twelve tails and two cabbages will give a dozen or more substantial servings. The buttered bread browned in the oven is a croute, cut thin and dried out rather than fried.

A Little History

Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) catalogued the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and its soup chapter runs to hundreds of numbered entries, many of them named after patrons, public figures or hotel colleagues in the French fashion of the day; "a la Rundell" may belong to that pattern, though the person behind it is not recorded in the book. The dish itself is a thrifty cut treated with restaurant technique: tails are gelatinous and cheap, and long moist cooking turns them into something rich enough to carry four quarts of broth. Pairing them with cabbage stewed in the cooking liquor points to the French potee and garbure tradition rather than anything invented in the Delmonico's kitchen, and calf's tail appears alongside calf's feet, head and ears in this section because a nineteenth-century professional kitchen bought whole animals and was expected to use all of them.