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.