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Ox-cheek, Stewed

A slow-cooked stew of ox cheek with vegetables, herbs, and a brown roux sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Ox-cheek, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox-cheek

  1. Wash the ox-cheek in several waters, remove any splintered bones, and soak in salt water for at least 12 hours, changing the water 2 or 3 times.

  2. After soaking, wash it well in warm water, place it in a pot, cover with cold water, bring to a boil, and skim off any foam.

Cook the cheek

  1. Add the sliced vegetables, peppercorns, cloves, bouquet-garni, and salt, then cook slowly for about 4 hours until the bones can be easily removed.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Prepare a brown roux by frying the butter and flour together until nut-brown, then strain in about 1 pint of the cooking liquid, stir until it boils, and simmer for at least 10 minutes.

  2. Bone the cheek and cut it into serving pieces, then add the sherry and lemon juice to the sauce, season to taste, and return the cheek to the sauce until heated through.

  3. Garnish with diced or julienne strips of turnip and carrot cooked separately, and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 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-cheek
Provides the rich meat and gelatinous body that becomes tender during long, slow cooking.
Butter
Fat that combines with flour to form a roux, enriching the sauce's flavour and texture.
Flour
Starch that, cooked with butter into a roux, thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Onions
Aromatic vegetables that add savoury sweetness and depth to the cooking liquid.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the roux. Frying butter and flour until nut-brown develops nutty, toasted flavour and colour, but overheating scorches the starch and gives a bitter taste. Stirring steadily over moderate heat keeps it even.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, 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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