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Salmi of Ox Tail

A slow‑cooked ox tail stew thickened with flour and mushroom ketchup, served with mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Salmi of Ox Tail

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the tail

  1. Dip pieces of ox tail in seasoned flour.

  2. Fry in a little butter with the sliced onion.

Stew and strain

  1. Add peppercorns, cloves, seasoning, and stock.

  2. Stew gently for 4 hours, skimming well.

  3. Remove the tail and strain the stock.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken the stock with flour, add ketchup and boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Return pieces of tail to heat through.

  3. Add sherry and serve.

  4. Garnish with mashed potatoes piped through a rose forcer and parsley.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tail
Connective tissue breaks down into gelatin during slow stewing, giving the stock body and a rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Starch thickens the stock so it coats the meat and spoon.
Bovril stock
Provides the savoury beef base that the whole stew is built on.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, adding aromatic depth to the stew.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a rounded aroma that brightens the rich, fatty gravy.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 4 hours, skimming well. At a rolling boil, meat fibres tighten and turn tough while the stock turns cloudy. A gentle simmer lets collagen melt slowly into gelatin, and skimming removes the fat and foam that would otherwise spoil the flavour and clarity.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, mushroom, ketchup, pepper, clove, sherry, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, mushroom, ketchup, pepper, clove, sherry, butter. 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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