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Stewed Ox-tails

A slow-cooked stew of ox tails with onion, carrots, parsley, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stewed Ox-tails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oxtails

  1. Soak and wash the ox-tails well, then cut them into lengths of two or three joints.

Simmer

  1. Cover the ox-tails with cold broth or water and bring to a boil.

  2. Remove the scum, then add salt, pepper, onion, carrots, and parsley.

  3. Simmer for 2 hours and 15 minutes, or until the meat is tender.

Serve

  1. Serve with the vegetables or strain the gravy and thicken it.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tails
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and rich through long, slow simmering.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during simmering.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour to the broth as it cooks down with the meat.

The step that matters

Removing the scum. Skimming the foam that rises after boiling removes impurities that would otherwise cloud the broth and taste bitter. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer afterward keeps the stew clear and the meat tender rather than tough.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, carrot, parsley. 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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