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Ox-Cheek Stew

A stew of ox cheek simmered with rice flour, catsup, curry or ginger and cayenne, served with vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,196 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Ox-Cheek Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox-cheek

  1. Soak the ox-cheek for 4 to 5 hours and wash it thoroughly.

  2. In a pot, cook the ox-cheek in water for 2 to 3 hours until tender.

  3. Strain the gravy and remove excess fat.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a clean saucepan, bring the strained gravy to a boil.

  2. Mix in the rice flour, catsup, and curry powder (or ginger and cayenne).

  3. Stew for 10 minutes, then pour the sauce over the ox-cheek and serve.

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. Rice + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,196 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rice + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together477 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Flour + hamtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 becomes tender through long cooking in water.
Rice flour
Thickens the strained gravy into a sauce as it simmers.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce.
Curry powder
Gives the sauce its main spiced aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking the ox-cheek until tender. Ox cheek is a tough, collagen-rich cut. It needs a long, gentle simmer so the collagen softens into gelatin; stopping early leaves the meat chewy.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, flour, ham):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, flour, 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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