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Bread-crusted ox-tail served grilled or oven-browned, accompanied by stewed cabbage or tomato sauce gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and cabbage are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle the ox-tail with salt and cayenne pepper.

  2. Dip it into clarified butter, then coat it with fine bread crumbs.

Cook

  1. Place the ox-tail on a grill and brown it evenly on all sides.

  2. Alternatively, cook it in the oven at 400°F (200°C) until properly colored.

Serve

  1. Serve it on a bed of stewed cabbage or in its own thickened gravy with tomato sauce.

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. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + tomatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together333 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tail
Is the main meat that gets browned and served as the centre of the dish.
Clarified butter
Carries the bread crumbs and helps the coating brown in the heat.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust around the ox-tail as it cooks.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and savoury flavour to the serving gravy.

The step that matters

Coating with bread crumbs. The crumbs need an even layer of butter to brown evenly. Gaps or thin spots can burn or stay pale, so the crust looks uneven when the ox-tail is done.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, bread, tomato, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, bread, tomato, sauce. 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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