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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) · 10 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 and cut into pieces.

Assemble and bake

  1. Make a thick puff pastry and line a deep dish with it.

  2. Add the meat to the dish with truffles, morels, egg yolks, mushrooms, and forcemeat balls.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Fill the dish with the gravy from baking the cheek.

  5. Close the pie with a crust and 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
Provides the main body of meat, which becomes tender after long, slow cooking.
Truffles
Add a strong, earthy aroma that flavours the filling.
Morels
Add a deep, earthy flavour and meaty texture to the filling.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a crumbly, creamy texture to the filling.
Puff pastry crust
Forms a crisp, flaky, golden casing that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Bake the ox cheek until not overcooked. Ox cheek is a tough cut rich in collagen. It needs gentle, sustained heat to turn tender and gelatinous; overcooking can dry the meat and tighten its fibres, so check it closely while it is still moist and yielding.

“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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