Ox-Tail Soup
Have the butcher cut two small ox tails into two inch pieces; wash, drain and dry them, dust with flour and fry them brown in one tablespoonful of butter; cover them with two quarts of water and simmer slowly for two and a half hours. In the interval prepare one cupful each of carrot, turnip, onion and celery, cutting the carrot, turnip and onions in tiny dice and the celery in half inch pieces; parboil them for twenty minutes in salted water. Add the prepared vegetables to the soup, simmer for threequarters of an hour longer or until the vegetables are very tender, add one teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce, onehalf of a teaspoonful of salt, a dash of cayenne, and one teaspoonful of lemon juice; take from the fire, add three tablespoonfuls of Madeira (if desired), and serve.
A straightforward braised-tail soup that needs little translation; the main adjustments are in timing and in the fact that oxtail is no longer a butcher's throwaway.
- The hinge: cook until the meat leaves the boneTwo and a half hours plus three-quarters is a minimum, not a target. Modern oxtail from a young steer often wants 3-4 hours of bare simmering before the collagen softens and the broth gains body; judge by the meat pulling free of the bone, not the clock.
- Quantity"Two small ox tails" means roughly 3-4 lb of cut tail. If your butcher sells pre-cut pieces, buy by weight. The recipe gives no yield; on two quarts of liquid it will stretch to about six first-course servings.
- Skim and degreaseOxtail throws a great deal of fat. Skim during the simmer, or chill the strained broth and lift the solid cap off; the original gives no instruction either way.
- Flour and fatOne tablespoon of butter is not enough to brown 3-4 lb of floured meat in a modern pan. Brown in batches with a little more fat, or skip the flour dusting and brown dry for cleaner flavor, thickening at the end if you want it.
- Parboiling the vegetablesThe twenty-minute parboil in salted water may have been meant to tame turnip and celery before they went into the pot, though the recipe does not say. Since the vegetables then get only the last three-quarters of an hour, the parboil can reasonably be skipped and the vegetables added raw, allowing a little longer.
- Water levelTwo quarts will reduce considerably over three-plus hours. Keep the meat covered, topping up with hot water, or use a heavy lidded pot and a very low flame.
- Madeira and seasoningAdd the Madeira off the heat as directed so its aroma survives; a dry or medium Sercial/Verdelho suits better than a sweet Malmsey. Half a teaspoon of salt is light for two quarts — season to taste at the end, after reduction.
Oxtail soup is a thrift dish that turned respectable. Tails were among the cheapest cuts in the nineteenth-century butcher's shop, and the trade in them is often traced to London's hide and tanning yards, where the skinned tails were sold off separately; by the mid-1800s clear and thick oxtail soups were fixtures of English cookery books and, later, of the tinned-soup trade. Its appearance in an American household manual shows the pattern of these books: an economical cut dressed up with the era's standard flourishes a ddash of cayenne, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, and an optional glass of Madeira. The long, patient simmer is the whole point, since gelatin from the tail's many joints gives the broth a richness no quick stock can match.