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Ox Cheek Pie

A savory pie filled with ox cheek, truffles, morels, egg yolks, mushrooms, and forcemeat balls, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Truffle and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ox Cheek Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cheek

  1. Bake the ox cheek with seasoning until not overcooked.

  2. Let it stand overnight in the oven.

  3. Remove all flesh, kernels, and fat from the cheek.

  4. Cut the cheek into pieces.

Assemble the pie

  1. Make a thick puff pastry.

  2. Line a deep dish with the puff pastry.

  3. Add the pieces to the dish with truffles, morels, egg yolks, mushrooms, and forcemeat balls.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Fill the pie with the gravy from baking the cheek.

  6. Close the pie with a crust.

Bake

  1. Bake until the top is well done.

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. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Truffle + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,604 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + mushroomtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Truffle + peppertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,106 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox cheek
Slow baking breaks down its tough connective tissue into tender, rich meat.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp crust that holds the filling and browns in the oven.
Truffles
Contribute a strong, earthy aroma that gives the filling its distinctive flavour.
Morels
Add a meaty, earthy flavour and a chewy texture to the filling.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a crumbly, creamy texture to the filling.
Gravy from baking the cheek
Supplies moisture and concentrated meaty flavour so the filling stays juicy.

The step that matters

Bake the ox cheek until not overcooked. Ox cheek is a tough cut that needs long, gentle cooking to turn tender. Overcooking at high heat dries the meat and tightens its proteins, so it becomes stringy rather than succulent, and the gravy used in the filling loses body.

“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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