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Ox- Tails

A stew of ox tails with onions, carrots, turnips, and a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 145 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox- Tails

Ingredients

Directions

Brown and simmer

  1. Brown the ox tails with butter and a large onion in a stewpan.

  2. Peel and boil the button onions in 3 pints of water for 15–20 minutes, then set aside.

  3. Pour the boiling water from the button onions over the ox tails, adding enough boiling water to cover them.

  4. Add the sliced carrots 20 minutes before adding the turnips.

  5. Ensure the mixture does not stew too fast or too much.

Make the gravy

  1. Once tender, strain the gravy through a sieve and skim off the fat.

  2. In a separate pan, melt 1 ounce of butter and stir in enough flour to thicken.

  3. Gradually pour in the strained gravy, stirring until it boils, then let it simmer.

Serve

  1. Arrange the ox tails around a serving dish, place the vegetables in the center, and pour the gravy over.

  2. Warm the button onions in boiling water and place them around the dish just 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. Turnip + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 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 tails
Provide the meat and collagen that enrich the stew as it simmers slowly.
Butter
Adds richness and browning to the meat, and fat for the thickened gravy.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy into a smooth, body-rich sauce when cooked in fat.
Carrots
Add sweetness and firm texture that holds up during long simmering.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and texture to the stew vegetables.

The step that matters

Keep the stew at a gentle simmer. Boiling hard or stewing too fast toughens the meat's texture and can break down the vegetables and cloud the gravy. A slow, gentle simmer lets the collagen in the ox tails soften into tender meat.

Swap the capers

The recipe marks capers as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, carrot, turnip, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Capersthe original
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, carrot, turnip, flour. 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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