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Ox Heart Stewed

A stew of thinly sliced ox heart with onions, celery, potatoes, and a butter‑flour‑ketchup thickener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ox Heart Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Place the ox heart pieces in a stew pot with salt and enough liquid to cover them. Skim off any scum that rises to the surface.

  2. Add the chopped onions, celery, and parboiled potatoes. Let the mixture stew gently until all ingredients are tender.

Thicken and serve

  1. About 15 minutes before serving, mix the butter, flour, and ketchup or walnut pickles together. Stir this mixture into the stew to thicken it.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ox heart
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the stew's liquid when combined with butter and stirred in.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the stew.
Potatoes
Soften during stewing and add body to the broth.
Onions
Break down while stewing, adding sweetness and depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter and flour mixture. Flour thickens best when it is blended with fat first and stirred in while the liquid is hot, which helps prevent lumps. Adding it too early or dropping it in unmixed can leave the stew clumpy or thin.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, potato, butter, flour, ketchup):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, potato, butter, flour, ketchup. 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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