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Stewed Ox-tail

A slow-cooked stew of ox-tail with onions, carrots, celery, bay leaves, thyme, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Stewed Ox-tail

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Cut the ox-tail into pieces.

  2. Place in a pot and cover with water.

Simmer

  1. Add salt, pepper, chopped onions, carrots, celery, bay leaves, and thyme.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 2-3 hours until tender.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tail
Long simmering breaks down its connective tissue and collagen, making the meat tender and the broth rich.
Onions
Release sugars and aromatic compounds as they cook slowly, adding sweetness and depth to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the stew as they soften during the long simmer.
Celery
Contributes savory, aromatic flavor to the broth as it softens.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender. Oxtail is tough and needs a long, gentle simmer so its collagen can slowly convert to gelatin. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and cloud the broth, so keep the heat low once it reaches a boil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, carrot, celery, thyme):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, carrot, celery, thyme. 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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