🇬🇧 United Kingdom · England
Oxtail soup
An English soup made by long, slow simmering of jointed oxtails with onion, carrot, spices and wine or catchup, served as a strained clear soup or, in Victorian cookbooks, as a thickened purée with the meat returned.
Origin and history
Oxtail soup is a classic of English cookery, with recipes in nineteenth-century books such as Kitchiner's The Cook's Oracle (1830), Acton (1845) and Soyer (1854). One food historian found no cookbook mention of oxtail before 1827, and doubts the popular story that Huguenot refugees introduced it. Both clear and thickened forms were served.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 6 servings
- Total time
- 4 h
- Hands-on
- 40 min
Ingredients
- 1.5 kg3.3 lb oxtail, cut in joints
- 2 tbsp dripping, butter or oil
- 2 onions, chopped
- 2 carrots, diced
- 1 small turnip, diced
- 1 celery stalk, chopped
- 8 cloves
- 1/2 tsp allspice berries, lightly crushed
- 1/2 tsp black peppercorns
- 1 bay leaf and a few parsley stalks
- 2.5 litres10 1/2 cups cold water
- 125 ml1/2 cup red or Madeira wine, optional; or 1 tbsp mushroom ketchup
- 2 tbsp each butter and plain flour, only for the thickened style
- salt, to taste
Method
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1. Soak the oxtail pieces in warm water for 10 minutes, then drain and pat dry.
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2. Heat the fat in a large pot over medium-high heat and brown the oxtail in batches until deep golden. Set aside.
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3. In the same pot, cook the onions, carrots, turnip and celery for about 8 minutes until lightly coloured.
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4. Return the oxtail, add the cloves, allspice, peppercorns, bay leaf, parsley stalks and water, and bring slowly to a boil. Skim off the scum.
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5. Reduce to a gentle simmer (about 90 °C / 195 °F), partly cover, and cook for 3 hours until the meat slips off the bones.
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6. Lift out the oxtail and strain the broth into a clean pan, pressing on the vegetables. Chill briefly and skim off the fat.
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7. Pull the meat from the bones in small pieces and discard the bones.
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8. For the thick style, cook the butter and flour in a pan for 2 minutes, whisk in the hot broth, and simmer for 15 minutes. For the clear style, simply reheat the broth.
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9. Return the meat to the soup, add the wine or ketchup, simmer 5 minutes, season with salt and serve very hot.
Notes
- Nineteenth-century cookbooks give both a clear soup and a thickened one (in Victorian books sometimes puréed with the vegetables); the same recipe makes either, which is why there is one page.
- Oxtail soups in Germany (Ochsenschwanzsuppe) and Indonesia (sop buntut) are related dishes but are generally more stew-like than the English soup.
- Make it a day ahead: the fat sets on top and lifts off cleanly.
- A dash of sherry at the table is a classic finish.
- Mushroom ketchup is hard to find; Worcestershire sauce, a teaspoon, is a salty-tangy stand-in.
Adapted from Foods of England: Oxtail Soup (after Kitchiner, The Cook's Oracle, 1830, and Acton, 1845) and Alexis Soyer's oxtail soup (adapted from The Modern Housewife), with Regula Ysewijn.
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