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To Stew Ox Cheek

A slow‑cooked stew of ox cheek with carrots, turnips, onions, butter, flour, and seasonings, finished with port wine or ale.

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 ↓

To Stew Ox Cheek

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Clean the ox cheek.

  2. Parboil the ox cheek.

  3. Remove the bone.

Make the stew

  1. Stew the meat in the boiling liquid.

  2. Thicken the stew with butter and flour, browned together.

  3. Add diced carrots and turnips.

  4. Mince the onions.

  5. Add the minced onions with the vegetables.

  6. Season with salt, black pepper, and Jamaica pepper.

  7. Cover the pan.

  8. Stew for two hours.

  9. Stir in the port wine or ale.

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. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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. 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 cheek
Long stewing breaks down connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and rich.
Butter and flour
Cooked together they form a roux that thickens the stew and adds a nutty flavor.
Carrots and turnips
Add sweetness and body to the stew as they soften during cooking.
Onions
Release sugars and savory depth as they cook into the stew.
Port wine or ale
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Thicken the stew with butter and flour, browned together. Browning the flour and butter before adding them develops a nutty flavor and helps prevent lumps, while the starch thickens the liquid as it simmers.

Swap the onion

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

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

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