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Stewed Ox Heart

A stew made from ox heart simmered with onions, thyme, pepper, salt, and a pinch of brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Ox Heart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Divide the ox heart in half and dust it with flour.

  2. Fry the heart in a pan until browned on both sides.

Stew

  1. Place the heart in a saucepan and cover with water.

  2. Add thyme, pepper, salt, and onions to the saucepan.

  3. Simmer for 2 hours or until the heart is tender.

Thicken and season

  1. To thicken the gravy, mix flour with a little cold water and stir in.

  2. Adjust seasoning with salt, pepper, and a pinch of brown sugar if needed.

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. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + thymetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox heart
Main meat that becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Flour
Dusting helps the heart brown, and flour mixed with water thickens the gravy.
Onions
Soften during simmering and add sweetness and body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer for 2 hours or until the heart is tender. Ox heart is a tough, muscular meat. Long, gentle simmering breaks down its connective tissue, so the heart becomes tender. Boiling hard can toughen the meat, so keep the liquid at a gentle simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, thyme, pepper, sugar):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, thyme, pepper, sugar. 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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