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Ox Tail Hotch-potch

A stew of ox tails with bacon, carrots, turnips, celery, onions, and herbs, pureed vegetables added to the broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Ox Tail Hotch-potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald the ox tails in hot water.

  2. Disjoint the tails and place them in a saucepan.

  3. Add bacon, carrots, turnips, celery, onions, mixed herbs, salt, pepper, and enough water to cover.

Cook and strain

  1. Boil until the tails are tender.

  2. Remove the tails and the bunch of herbs.

  3. Strain the liquid and puree the vegetables through a sieve.

  4. Add the pureed vegetables back to the liquid.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the tails and serve.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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 tails
Provide the meat and collagen that become tender and give the stew its body during long boiling.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savoury fat that flavours the broth.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body when pureed into the broth.
Turnips
Contribute mild flavour and thickness when pureed into the broth.
Onions
Add savoury depth and sweetness that build the broth's base flavour.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil until the tails are tender. Ox tail is tough connective tissue. It needs a long, gentle simmer so collagen slowly breaks down into gelatin, making the meat tender and the broth rich. Boiling too hard or too briefly leaves the meat tough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, pepper. 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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