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Ox-cheek Stewed

A slow‑cooked stew of ox cheek with onions, turnips, carrots, herbs, and a roux‑thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ox-cheek Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cheek

  1. Prepare the ox cheek the day before by cleaning it and soaking it in warm water for 3-4 hours.

  2. Soak the cheek in cold water overnight.

  3. Wipe the cheek clean and place it in a stew pan, covering it with water.

  4. Skim the surface when it begins to boil.

Stew

  1. Add the onions (with cloves inserted), turnips, carrots, bay leaves, allspice, celery, sweet herbs, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add Cayenne and garlic to taste for a stronger flavor.

  3. Let it stew gently for about 3 hours until tender.

  4. Remove the cheek, cut it into pieces, and strain the gravy.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter and stir in enough flour to form a roux.

  2. Gradually mix in the gravy and add the vinegar or ketchup or port wine.

  3. Bring to a boil and serve in a soup or ragout dish, or use it to make barley broth.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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

Ox cheek
Dense connective tissue that softens into tender, gelatinous meat during long, gentle stewing.
Butter
Fat that combines with flour to form the roux that thickens the gravy.
Flour
Starch that thickens the gravy when cooked into a roux with butter.
Gravy
Cooking liquid that forms the body of the stew and becomes the thickened sauce.
Vinegar
Acidity that brightens the rich, savoury sauce and balances its fattiness.

The step that matters

Stew gently rather than boiling. Connective tissue in the cheek breaks down into gelatin slowly at a gentle simmer. A hard boil toughens the meat and clouds the gravy, so the stew should stay barely bubbling until tender.

Swap the garlic

The recipe marks garlic as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, turnip, carrot, allspice, celery, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, turnip, carrot, allspice, celery, pepper. 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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