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Stewed Oxtail

A slow‑cooked oxtail stew with carrots, turnip, onion, herbs, mace, and lemon‑flavored gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 Oxtail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oxtail

  1. Cut the oxtail into sections at each joint and trim excess fat.

  2. Place the oxtail pieces in a saucepan, cover with cold water, and bring to a boil.

  3. Strain off the water and dry the oxtail pieces.

Make the stew

  1. In the same saucepan, heat the butter and lightly fry the oxtail pieces.

  2. Remove the oxtail and make the butter hot again.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook until light brown.

  4. Add the stock and stir until it boils.

  5. Return the oxtail to the saucepan and add the chopped vegetables and spices tied in muslin.

  6. Simmer gently for 4 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve the oxtail on a hot dish, skim the gravy, and strain it over the meat.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 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. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 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

Oxtail
Provides the meat and collagen that give the stew its body and rich texture.
Flour
Browned in the butter, it thickens the stock into a gravy.
Butter or dripping
Carries the frying of the oxtail and browns the flour, adding richness.
Onion
Releases sweetness and aroma into the stock during the long simmer.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the stock during the long simmer.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and earthy flavour to the stock during simmering.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Cooking the flour in the hot butter until light brown develops a nutty flavour and removes raw starch taste. Stopping too early leaves the gravy pale and floury, while overbrowning makes it bitter.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, thyme, parsley, clove, butter. 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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