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Stewed Ox-cheek, Plain

A slow‑cooked stew of ox cheek with carrots, leeks, turnips, herbs, and spices, served with optional bread or celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Ox-cheek, Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cheek

  1. Soak the ox cheek the day before cooking.

  2. Cleanse the ox cheek.

Make the soup

  1. Place the cheek in a stew pot with 3 quarts of water and bring to a boil.

  2. Skim the surface.

  3. Simmer for 2 hours.

  4. Add carrots, leeks, turnips, sweet herbs, whole pepper, and allspice.

  5. Skim often until the meat is tender.

  6. Remove the meat.

  7. Let the soup cool.

  8. Remove the layer of fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Serve the soup separately or with the meat.

  2. Fry onions with flour.

  3. Simmer the fried onions in the soup for color.

  4. If you prefer, remove the vegetables.

  5. Add toasted roll or fried bread.

  6. Serve with celery for added flavor.

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. Leek + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Leek + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox cheek
Main meat that becomes tender and rich through long, slow simmering.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during simmering.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and earthy flavor to the broth.
Leeks
Add a gentle onion-like aroma and savory depth to the stock.
Burnt sugar
Deepens the broth's color and adds a slightly bitter caramel note.
Onions
Fried with flour, they thicken the soup and add browned flavor.

The step that matters

Skim the surface. Skimming removes coagulated proteins and fat that would otherwise cloud the broth and make it greasy and harder to taste clearly.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, leek, turnip, pepper, allspice, sugar, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, leek, turnip, pepper, allspice, sugar, flour. 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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