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Hotch-potch, Ox-tail

A slow‑cooked ox‑tail stew thickened with flour and butter, served with peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Hotch-potch, Ox-tail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the ox-tail with salt and soak it in lukewarm water for 1–2 hours.

Make the stew

  1. Place the ox-tail in a stewpan with the carrot, savory herbs, bay leaf, onions, garlic, peppercorns, and enough water to cover.

  2. Simmer gently until the meat is tender and easily leaves the bones.

  3. Thicken the stew with flour and butter.

Serve

  1. Serve with sippets around the dish.

  2. If in season, add green peas stewed in the gravy a few minutes 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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + peastop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Carrot + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tail
Provides the main meat and gelatinous body as it simmers into a rich stew.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding savory depth to the broth.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy that clings to the meat.
Butter
Combines with flour to form a roux that smooths and enriches the thickened gravy.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the meat is tender and easily leaves the bones.. Rapid boiling toughens meat proteins and can break up the tissue, while slow simmering lets collagen in the connective tissue slowly convert to gelatin, making the meat tender and the broth rich.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, clove, garlic, flour, butter):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, clove, garlic, flour, 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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