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Stewed Ox Cheek, Flatet

A slow‑cooked ox cheek stew with carrots, leeks, turnips, herbs, spices, and optional burnt sugar or fried onions for color.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Ox Cheek, Flatet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak and cleanse the ox cheek the day before cooking.

  2. Place the cheek in a stewpot with 3 quarts of water and bring to a boil.

  3. Skim the surface.

Stew

  1. Reduce heat and simmer for 2 hours.

  2. Add carrots, leeks, turnips, sweet herbs, whole pepper, and all-spice.

  3. Skim often.

  4. When the meat is tender, remove it from the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Let the soup cool.

  2. Remove the fat from the surface.

  3. Remove the vegetables.

  4. Add burnt sugar or fried onions for color if desired.

  5. Serve the soup separately or with the meat.

  6. Add toasted bread or fried bread instead.

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. Leek + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and rich through long, slow simmering.
Fat (in the method)
Rendered fat on the surface adds richness and flavour, so it is skimmed off after cooling.
Burnt sugar or fried onions
Adds deep brown colour to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface. Skimming removes foam and impurities that would make the broth cloudy and greasy. Repeated skimming during simmering keeps the soup clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Celerythe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, leek, turnip, 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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