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Ox-cheek, Stewed

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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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 ox cheek

  1. Wash the ox-cheek in several waters and soak it in salt water for at least 12 hours, changing the water 2 or 3 times.

  2. Wash the ox-cheek well in warm water.

  3. Place it in a boiling pot covered with cold water.

  4. Bring the liquid to a boil.

  5. Skim off any impurities.

Make the stew

  1. Add the sliced onions, carrots, turnip, celery, peppercorns, cloves, bouquet garni, and salt.

  2. Cook slowly for about 4 hours 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 mixture until it boils.

  4. Simmer for at least 10 minutes.

  5. Add the sherry and lemon juice to the sauce.

  6. Season the sauce to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Bone the cheek.

  2. Cut the cheek into serving pieces.

  3. Return the cheek pieces to the sauce and heat through.

  4. Garnish with diced or julienne strips of separately cooked 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 its connective tissue, giving tender, gelatinous meat.
Butter and flour
Cooked together into a roux, they thicken the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.
Onions, carrots, turnip, celery
Aromatic vegetables that release sweetness and savoury flavour into the cooking liquid.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a rounded, aromatic depth to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the butter and flour to a nut-brown roux. Cooking the flour in fat until nut-brown develops colour and nutty flavour, while the starch still thickens well. Stopping too early leaves a pale, floury taste; cooking too long weakens thickening and can taste bitter.

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.

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