Skip to main content
Main

Ox-cheek, Stewed

A slow‑cooked ox cheek stew with vegetables, aromatics, and a brown roux‑based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Ox-cheek, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cheek

  1. Wash the ox-cheek in several waters and remove any splintered bones.

  2. Soak the cheek in salt water for at least 12 hours, changing the water two or three times.

  3. After soaking, wash the cheek well in warm water.

Stew

  1. Place the cheek in a boiling pot covered with cold water and bring the pot to a boil.

  2. Skim off any impurities.

  3. Add the chopped vegetables, peppercorns, clove, bouquet garni, and a heaped teaspoon of salt.

  4. Cook slowly for about 4 hours, or until the bones can be easily removed.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare a brown roux by frying the butter and flour together until nut-brown.

  2. Strain more than 1 pint of the cooking liquid into the roux.

  3. Stir the roux mixture until it boils, then simmer for at least 10 minutes.

  4. Add the sherry (if using) and lemon juice to the sauce.

  5. Season to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Bone the cheek and cut the cheek into serving pieces.

  2. Return the cheek pieces to the sauce until heated through.

  3. Garnish with separately cooked diced or julienne strips of turnip and carrot.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-cheek
Long slow cooking breaks down connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and rich in gelatin.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and, with flour, forms the roux that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Starch that thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce when cooked with the butter.
Onion
Releases sugars and aromatic compounds during slow cooking, adding savoury depth to the stock.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic sweetness to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the roux until nut-brown. Frying the butter and flour long enough builds nutty, toasted flavour and colour. Stopping too early leaves a pale, raw-tasting sauce, while going too far gives bitterness.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipes