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Ox-tail and Calf’s Tail

A hearty stew of ox tail, calf tails, onions, carrots, turnips, and forcemeat balls simmered in butter, herbs, Madeira, and walnut ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Ox-tail and Calf’s Tail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Chop the ox tail and calves’ tails into joints.

  2. Fry the joints with the onion, carrots, salt, and pepper in butter until lightly browned.

Simmer the stew

  1. Pour in hot water and add the herbs and bread crust.

  2. Simmer on low heat for 4 hours.

  3. Remove the crust, add turnips and forcemeat balls, Madeira, and walnut ketchup.

  4. Simmer for an additional hour before serving.

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. Carrot + peppertop 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tail and calves’ tails
Collagen in the joints breaks down during long simmering, giving the stew body and a rich, gelatinous texture.
Butter
Browns the joints and onion, building savoury flavour before the liquid is added.
Forcemeat balls
Cook in the broth, soaking up flavour and adding a soft, meaty texture.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour when stirred in near the end of cooking.
Turnips
Absorb the stew's flavour and add a mild, slightly sweet vegetable element.

The step that matters

Browning the joints in butter. Frying until lightly browned creates Maillard reactions that develop deep savoury flavour. Pale, under-browned joints give a flat, boiled taste to the finished stew.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, butter, bread, turnip, ketchup, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, butter, bread, turnip, ketchup, 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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