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Ragout of Ox Tails

A stew of ox tails, bacon, carrots, onions, and herbs simmered in butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ragout of Ox Tails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the butter over the bottom of a stew pan.

  2. Add the pieces of ox tails and bacon.

  3. Cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally until browned.

  4. Mix in the flour and then add the water.

Simmer

  1. When boiling, add the parsley, bay leaves, carrots, and onions.

  2. Season with salt, sugar, and pepper.

  3. Simmer until the tails and vegetables are tender, skimming as needed.

Serve

  1. Serve the ox tails in a pyramid on mashed potatoes.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tails
Provide the meat and gelatin-rich body that gives the stew its richness after long simmering.
Streaky bacon
Adds fat and smoky savour that flavours the browning base and the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied gravy.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the meat and carries flavour into the stew.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and tender texture to the finished stew.
Button onions
Soften during simmering and add sweetness that balances the savoury meat.

The step that matters

Brown the ox tails and bacon. Browning over moderate heat develops deep flavour through the Maillard reaction. Stirring occasionally prevents scorching, and pale meat would make the finished stew taste flat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, walnut, flour, parsley, carrot, sugar, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, walnut, flour, parsley, carrot, sugar, 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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