Skip to main content
Main

And the Meat Served with Onion Sauce

A slow‑cooked cow‑heel stew simmered in milk with cinnamon and onions, sweetened to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,283 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

And the Meat Served with Onion Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slow oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Buy a dressed cow-heel from a tripe shop.

  2. Cut the cow-heel into small pieces.

Stew

  1. Place the pieces in a saucepan with 1 quart of milk and 2 inches of cinnamon.

  2. Cover the saucepan with a lid and tie it tightly with paper.

  3. Put the saucepan in a slow oven (300°F / 150°C) to stew for at least 3 hours.

  4. If no oven is available, place the saucepan by the fire to stew.

Strain and set

  1. After stewing, remove the saucepan from the oven, take off the lid, and strain the milk into a basin, sweetening to taste.

  2. Set the milk aside until the jelly is set; it can be eaten hot or cold.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Cinnamon and sugar share little aroma chemistry, yet 30,779 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Cow-heel
Breaks down during long stewing to give the liquid body and a jelly-like set.
Milk
Forms the cooking liquid that becomes the set, creamy base of the dish.
Onions
Add savoury flavour to the stew.

The step that matters

Slow stewing for at least 3 hours. Collagen in the cow-heel only turns to gelatin with long, gentle heat. Rushing or boiling the pot can leave the meat tough and the liquid unable to set into a jelly.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes