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Stewed Ox Tail

A slow‑cooked stew of ox tail with vegetables, herbs, and a flour‑thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stewed Ox Tail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover the ox tail with cold water in a stewpan.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Remove and dry on a cloth.

  4. Cut the tail into joints.

  5. Remove the fat from the root end.

Make the stew

  1. Heat the butter in the stewpan until smoking.

  2. Add the pieces of tail, sliced vegetables, herbs, and spices, then cover the pan.

  3. Fry for 10 minutes, shaking to prevent burning.

  4. Stir in the flour.

  5. Fry for a minute.

  6. Gradually add the water and season.

Simmer and serve

  1. Simmer gently for 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Arrange the pieces of tail on a dish.

  3. Strain the sauce over them.

  4. Garnish with cooked carrot and macaroni.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 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 tail
Its connective tissue breaks down during long simmering, giving the sauce body and a rich texture.
Butter or dripping
Fat that browns the tail and vegetables, building savoury flavour before the liquid is added.
Flour
Cooked briefly in the fat, it thickens the water into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aroma to the sauce as it cooks with the tail.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 2 to 3 hours. Slow, gentle heat converts the tail's connective tissue into gelatin while keeping the meat tender. A hard boil toughens the meat and makes the sauce cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, parsley, thyme, flour, carrot, turnip):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, parsley, thyme, flour, carrot, turnip. 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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