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Brawn of Ox Cheek

A gelatinous stock made from ox cheek, herbs, and vegetables, finished with diced pork and ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Brawn of Ox Cheek

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meat

  1. Place the ox cheek, herbs, onions, shallots, turnip, and carrot in a saucepan.

  2. Cover with cold water and simmer for 5 to 6 hours until the meat is soft.

  3. Remove the bones, herbs, and vegetables from the pot.

Season and set

  1. Add salt and pepper to taste.

  2. Stir in the diced fat pork and lean ham, and simmer for another 15 minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it cool until set.

  4. Turn it out onto a dish and garnish with curly parsley.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together202 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox cheek
Provides the main meat, which breaks down into tender pieces during long simmering.
Fat pork
Adds fat and richness, giving the set brawn a moist, silky mouthfeel.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the jellied mixture.
Onions
Build savoury aroma and depth in the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Simmering until the meat is soft. The long, gentle simmer is what converts tough connective tissue in the cheek into gelatin and tender meat. Stopping early leaves the meat firm and the set weak, so check for softness before moving on.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, turnip, clove, carrot, pepper, pork, ham):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, turnip, clove, carrot, pepper, pork, ham. 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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