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Stewed Ox-tail and Kidneys

A hearty stew of ox tail and kidneys simmered with onions, carrots, turnip, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Ox-tail and Kidneys

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the ox-tail and cut it into joints.

  2. Skin and halve the kidneys, removing the center fat.

  3. Mix flour, salt, and pepper, then dip the joints and kidneys in the mixture.

Brown and stew

  1. Brown the joints and kidneys in the dripping along with a large onion.

  2. Pour away the fat from the pot, then return the meat and onion to the pot.

  3. Add 2 cups of hot water and stew gently for about 2 hours until the joints are almost tender.

  4. Add the diced carrot and turnip, and stew for another hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the joints and kidneys from the pot.

  2. Strain the gravy and thicken it with flour and seasoning if necessary.

  3. Pour the gravy over the meat and 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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tail
Provides the main meat, whose connective tissue breaks down into rich body during slow stewing.
Sheep's kidneys
Adds a rich, strongly flavoured meat that deepens the gravy during long gentle cooking.
Flour
Dusts the meat for browning and later thickens the strained gravy.
Dripping
Fat used to brown the meat, building colour and savoury flavour on the surface.
Onion
Browns with the meat and adds sweetness and aroma to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew gently for the full time. Ox-tail is tough connective tissue that needs long, low, gentle simmering to turn gelatinous and tender. Boiling hard toughens the meat and makes the gravy cloudy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, carrot, turnip. 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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