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Stewed Ox-tail

A stew of ox-tail joints simmered with lemon juice, onion, mushroom ketchup, herbs, carrots, turnips, and peppercorns, served with fried bread croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Ox-tail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Wash and dry the ox-tail, then divide it into joints.

  2. Trim off excess fat from the joints.

  3. Fry the joints in butter until nicely browned.

Stew

  1. Place the browned joints in a pan with hot water or stock.

  2. Add lemon juice, fried onion, herbs, and vegetables to the pan.

  3. Season to taste.

  4. Simmer for 2 to 4 hours until tender.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the joints and strain the gravy.

  2. In the same pan, add browned flour to the gravy and stir until boiling.

  3. Add ketchup.

  4. Return the joints to the pan and heat through.

  5. Serve garnished with croutons of fried bread, and carrot and turnip cut into fancy shapes and boiled in salted water.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Lemon + carrottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tail
Rich meat and collagen that softens during long simmering into tender, gelatin-rich pieces.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, savoury flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the joints brown during frying.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury depth to the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury gravy.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body to the stew.

The step that matters

Browning the joints in butter. Browning triggers the Maillard reaction, which builds the deep, savoury flavour of the finished gravy. Pale joints give a flat taste, while overly dark ones can turn bitter, so brown them evenly until nicely golden.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, onion, mushroom, ketchup, carrot, turnip, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, onion, mushroom, ketchup, carrot, turnip, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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