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Oxtail Stew

A slow‑cooked stew of ox tail and onion, seasoned with salt, pepper, and ketchup, served with toast garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Oxtail Stew

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Fry the pieces of ox tail and sliced onion until browned.

  2. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Stew

  1. Place the fried tail and onion in a Nottingham jar and cover with water.

  2. Stew in a 300°F (150°C) oven for three hours.

Thicken and serve

  1. Before serving, thicken the gravy with flour mixed with cold water and add a dash of ketchup.

  2. Serve the stew on a hot dish, garnished with snippets of toast.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + ketchuptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tail
Provides the meat and, as it stews, rich gelatin that gives the gravy body.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth to the gravy as it browns and softens.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat rather than running thin.

The step that matters

Browning the ox tail and onion. Frying until browned triggers the Maillard reaction, which builds the deep, roasted flavour the gravy depends on. Pale frying leaves the stew tasting flat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, ketchup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, ketchup. 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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