Three ox tails will make a large tureen full of soup. Desire the
butcher to divide them at the joints. Rub them with salt, and put them
to soak in warm water, while you prepare the vegetables. Put into a
large pot or stew-pan four onions peeled and quartered, a bunch of
parsley, two sliced carrots, two sliced turnips, and two dozen pepper
corns. Then put in the tails, and pour on three quarts of water.
Cover the pot, and set it on hot coals by the side of the fire. Keep
it gently simmering for about three hours, supplying it well with
fresh hot coals. Skim it carefully. When the meat is quite tender, and
falls from the bones, strain the soup into another pot, and add to it
a spoonful of mushroom catchup, and two spoonfuls of butter rubbed in
flour.
You may thicken it also with the pulp of a dozen onions first fried
soft, and then rubbed through a cullender. After it is thickened, let
it just boil up, and then send it to table, with small squares of
toasted bread in the tureen.