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Ox Cheek Stew

A stew made from ox cheek simmered with ketchup, curry powder, and rice flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. Place the ox cheek in a pot and cover with water. Cook for 2 to 3 hours until tender.

  3. Strain the gravy and remove excess fat.

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the strained gravy with rice flour, ketchup, and curry powder or spices.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the ox cheek with the sauce poured over it.

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 + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + ketchuptop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox cheek
Provides the meat that becomes tender through long, slow cooking as its connective tissue breaks down.
Rice flour
Thickens the strained gravy into a sauce as it heats and simmers.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce, giving it a tangy, rounded flavour.
Curry powder
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the sauce after adding rice flour. Starch granules must be heated in liquid to swell and thicken. Bringing the sauce to a boil and simmering it for the full time lets the flour cook out, so the sauce thickens smoothly and loses its raw starchy taste.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, flour, ketchup. 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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