Skip to main content
Main

Ox-cheek Stewed

A slow‑cooked stew of ox cheek with onions, turnips, carrots, bay leaves, allspice, celery, herbs, and a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ox-cheek Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the ox cheek the day before by cleaning it and soaking it in warm water for 3–4 hours, then in cold water overnight.

  2. The next day, wipe it clean and place it in a stew pan, covering it with water.

Stew

  1. Skim the surface when it begins to boil, then add the onions (with cloves inserted), turnips, carrots, bay leaves, allspice, celery, sweet herbs, pepper, and salt.

  2. For a stronger flavor, add Cayenne and garlic to taste.

  3. Let it stew gently for about 3 hours until tender.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the cheek, cut it into pieces, and strain the gravy.

  2. In a separate pan, melt the butter and stir in enough flour to form a paste.

  3. Gradually mix in the strained gravy and add the vinegar or ketchup, bringing it to a boil.

  4. Serve in a soup or ragout dish, or use it to make barley broth.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms a paste with butter that thickens the strained gravy.
Butter
Carries the flour into a roux that gives the gravy body and a rich mouthfeel.
Ox cheek
Collagen-rich meat that breaks down during long stewing to become tender and silky.
Onions
Release sugars and aromatic compounds that deepen the savoury flavour of the stock.
Vinegar or ketchup
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing gently for about 3 hours. At a hard boil the meat seizes and turns stringy, while gentle heat slowly converts collagen into gelatin, which makes the cheek tender and gives the gravy body.

Swap the garlic

The recipe marks garlic as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, turnip, carrot, allspice, celery, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, turnip, carrot, allspice, celery, 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipes