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Ox-tail Ragout

A slow‑cooked ragout of ox tails, onions, garlic, carrots, turnips, and wine, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox-tail Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ox-tails

  1. Chop the ox tails through every joint.

Stew

  1. In a saucepan, stew the ox tails with the onion, cloves, and black peppercorns for 4 hours until tender.

  2. Remove the ox tails and cut them into pieces at each joint.

Make the ragout and serve

  1. In a stewpan, combine the ox tail pieces with good gravy, scraped turnip, and carrot.

  2. Thicken the gravy with a little flour, and serve hot.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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-tails
Long stewing breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and gelatinous.
Flour
Starch thickens the gravy as it heats, giving it body.
Carrots
Natural sugars add mild sweetness and body to the gravy.
Turnips
Starchy flesh softens during cooking and adds earthy flavour and body.

The step that matters

Stew until tender. Ox-tail is rich in connective tissue that only turns tender and gelatinous after a long, gentle simmer. Cutting it short leaves the meat tough, so it needs the full time at a low, steady heat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, madeira wine, sauce, pepper, carrot, turnip, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, madeira wine, sauce, pepper, carrot, turnip, 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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