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Savoury Ox Tail

Savory Ox Tail is a dish of braised ox tail topped with breadcrumb mixture and baked with potatoes.

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 ↓

Savoury Ox Tail

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Boil the ox tail until tender.

  2. Remove the pieces and place them in a fireproof dish.

Make the topping

  1. In a bowl, combine the minced onions, pepper, salt, breadcrumbs, thyme, and beaten egg.

  2. Spread the mixture over and around the pieces of ox tail in the dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Add the dripping to the dish before baking.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes until crisp.

  3. Add the sliced, partly boiled potatoes to the dish to finish.

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. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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 tail
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long boiling.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust over the meat when baked.
Beaten egg
Binds the onion and breadcrumb mixture so it holds together on the meat.
Dripping
Adds fat that helps the topping brown and crisp in the oven.
Potatoes
Add starch and body to the finished dish, finishing it in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until crisp. The topping needs enough oven heat and time to dry out and brown. Pulling the dish out too early leaves the breadcrumb crust soft and pale.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, thyme, egg, potato. 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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