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To Stew Ox-cheek

A stew of ox cheek with forcemeat, hard‑boiled eggs, pepper, salt, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,777 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Stew Ox-cheek

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox cheek

  1. Clean the ox cheek.

  2. Soak the ox cheek in cold water for several hours.

  3. Place the ox cheek in a stewpan.

  4. Simmer gently until tender.

  5. Remove the bones from the ox cheek.

  6. Tie the meat in a cloth with a weight on top.

  7. Let it sit overnight.

Assemble the dish

  1. Prepare a forcemeat from any white meat.

  2. Hard-boil the eggs.

  3. Slice the ox cheek.

  4. Layer the sliced ox cheek in a dish with forcemeat and sliced eggs.

  5. Season with pepper and salt.

  6. Pour in enough gravy to fill the dish.

Cook and serve

  1. Either stew it or cover with a coarse paste and bake slowly in the oven.

  2. Remove the paste before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ox cheek
Dense connective tissue becomes tender and gelatinous during long, gentle cooking, giving body to the meat.
Forcemeat
Adds a soft, binding layer that gives the sliced meat a moist, cohesive texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Sliced eggs add a firm, mild contrast in texture and richness to the layers.
Gravy
Fills the dish with liquid that keeps the layers moist and adds savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender. Collagen in the ox cheek breaks down into gelatin only with long, low, gentle heat. Boiling hard toughens the muscle fibres and leaves the meat stringy and dry.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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