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Ox-cheek, Stewed Plain

A slow‑cooked stew of ox cheek with carrots, leeks, turnips, sweet herbs, pepper, allspice, and optional burnt sugar or browned onions with flour for color.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox-cheek, Stewed Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak and cleanse the ox cheek the day before cooking.

  2. Place the cheek in a stew pot and cover with 3 quarts of water.

Stew

  1. Bring to a boil, then skim the surface and reduce to a simmer.

  2. After 2 hours, add carrots, leeks, turnips, sweet herbs, whole pepper, and allspice.

  3. Skim often until the meat is tender, then remove it from the pot.

  4. For a rich brown color, use burnt sugar or fry onions with flour and simmer them in the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Let the soup cool, then remove the layer of fat.

  2. Serve the soup separately or with the meat.

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. Leek + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox cheek
Long simmering breaks down its connective tissue, making the meat tender and rich.
Carrots
Release sweetness and body into the broth as they cook slowly.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body to the broth during the long simmer.
Leeks
Contribute a mild onion aroma that builds flavor in the broth.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the broth.

The step that matters

Skim the surface and keep a gentle simmer. Bringing the pot to a hard boil churns fat and impurities into the broth and can toughen the meat. A gentle simmer with regular skimming keeps the soup clear and lets the cheek become tender.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

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