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To Stew Ox-cheek

A slow‑cooked stew of ox cheek with forcemeat, hard‑boiled eggs, pepper, salt, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,777 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Stew Ox-cheek

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 the ox cheek

  1. Clean the ox cheek and soak it in cold water for 5 hours.

  2. Place the ox cheek in a stewpan and simmer gently until tender.

  3. Remove the bones from the ox cheek.

  4. Tie the meat in a cloth with a weight on top and let it stand overnight.

  5. Slice the ox cheek.

Assemble the dish

  1. Make a forcemeat from white meat.

  2. Prepare six hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Layer the sliced ox cheek, forcemeat, and sliced eggs in a dish, seasoning with pepper and salt.

  4. Pour enough gravy to fill the dish.

  5. Cover the dish with coarse paste.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until cooked.

  2. Remove the paste before serving.

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. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

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

  2. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

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

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ox cheek
Slow simmering and resting turn the tough meat tender and sliceable.
White meat
Forms a soft, binding forcemeat that holds the layers together.
Eggs
Hard-boiled eggs add firm texture and body to the layered filling.
Gravy
Fills the dish and keeps the meat moist during the long, slow bake.

The step that matters

Simmering the ox cheek until tender. Ox cheek is dense connective tissue. It needs long, gentle simmering so collagen breaks down into gelatin; rushing it with a hard boil leaves the meat tough and stringy.

“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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