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Stewed Ox Tail

A stew of ox tail, onion, mace, and lemon juice, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Ox Tail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the onion in the fat until golden.

  2. Strain the onion.

  3. Cut the ox tail at the joints.

Brown and make the sauce

  1. Brown the tail pieces in the same fat.

  2. Remove the browned tail pieces.

  3. Stir in the flour.

  4. Allow the flour mixture to brown.

  5. Return the tail pieces to the pan.

  6. Cover them with water.

  7. Add the vegetables and seasonings.

  8. Simmer for three hours.

  9. Stir in the lemon juice before serving.

Serve

  1. Arrange the tail pieces on a hot dish.

  2. Strain the sauce over the tail pieces.

  3. Garnish with toast.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tail
Provides the meat, which becomes tender and rich during the long, slow simmer.
Flour
Browned in the fat, it thickens the cooking liquid into a body-rich sauce.
Fat
Carries the frying and browning, building deep flavour on the onion and tail pieces.
Onion
Fried until golden and strained, it adds sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Added at the end, it contributes acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Allow the flour mixture to brown. Browning the flour in the fat develops nutty, roasted flavour and colour in the sauce. Pulling it too early leaves a pale, raw-tasting base, while letting it burn gives a bitter taste.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, pepper, lemon, flour):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, pepper, lemon, flour. 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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