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Braized Ox-cheek, with Stewed Cabbages

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Braized Ox-cheek, with Stewed Cabbages

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the ox-cheek for braising as directed in previous instructions.

  2. Add the German sausage and streaky bacon to the pot.

  3. Cut the savoy cabbages in half, remove the stalks, and parboil them in water.

  4. Tie the cabbage halves with string and cover with buttered paper.

  5. Braize gently for about 2 hours.

  6. Once done, press the ox-cheek until cold, then cut into scallops.

  7. Cut the bacon and sausage into neat scallops and keep hot in a pan with half glaze.

  8. Drain the cabbage in a colander, press in a napkin, and cut into cork-shaped pieces.

  9. Arrange the ox-cheek scallops in a close circle, alternating with bacon and sausage.

  10. Place the cabbage around the base as a border, topping each piece with a ring of carrot and a small pear-shaped turnip.

  11. Fill the center with small fancy-shaped carrots and turnips boiled in broth with sugar, then glazed.

  12. Pour Espagnole sauce around the base 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cabbage + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,505 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + carrottop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, turnip, sugar):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, turnip, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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