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 ↓
Boiled Ox Cheek
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash the ox cheek thoroughly.
Soak it in cold water for a few hours.
Carefully break the bone in two without damaging the flesh.
Cook and serve
Place the ox cheek in a pot of boiling water with salt.
Boil for 2 to 3 hours.
Remove the bone and serve with boiled carrots and turnips.
Strain the cooking liquid to make barley soup.
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.
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Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Ox cheek
- Main protein; long simmering breaks down its connective tissue until the meat turns tender.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the boiling water so the meat is flavoured from the cooking liquid outward.
The step that matters
Boil for 2 to 3 hours. The cheek is tough connective tissue. It needs a steady, gentle boil long enough for collagen to convert to gelatin; stopping early leaves the meat chewy.
“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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