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Ox-cheek, Stewed

A slow‑cooked stew of ox cheek with onions, turnips, carrots, herbs, and a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ox-cheek, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox cheek

  1. Clean and prepare the ox cheek.

  2. Soak the ox cheek in lukewarm water for 3–4 hours.

  3. Transfer the ox cheek to cold water.

  4. Soak the ox cheek in cold water for an additional 12 hours.

  5. Wipe the cheek clean.

Stew the cheek

  1. Place the cheek in a stewpan, covering it with water.

  2. Skim the surface when it begins to boil.

  3. Add the onions, turnips, carrots, bay leaves, allspice, celery, sweet herbs, salt, pepper, cayenne, and garlic if desired.

  4. Let the stew cook gently for about 3 hours until tender.

  5. Remove the cheek from the stew.

  6. Cut the cheek into small pieces for serving.

  7. Strain the gravy.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a separate stewpan.

  2. Stir in enough flour to form a paste.

  3. Gradually mix in the strained gravy.

  4. Add the vinegar or catsup.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  6. Serve in a deep or ragout dish.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox cheek
Dense connective tissue that softens into tender, gelatinous meat during long, gentle stewing.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and enriches the sauce, and forms the base for the flour roux.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
1.5 pints of the strained gravy
Cooking liquid that becomes the body of the sauce once thickened.
Carrots
Adds natural sweetness and aromatic depth to the stewing liquid.
Basil, tarragon, or elder vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter. Flour must be cooked into the butter to form a smooth paste before the gravy is added; adding liquid too early or without stirring causes lumps, because starch granules clump before they can hydrate evenly.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, turnip, carrot, allspice, celery, pepper, garlic):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, turnip, carrot, allspice, celery, pepper, garlic. 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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