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Stewed Ox Cheek

A slow‑cooked stew of ox cheek with carrots, turnip, celery, onions, mace, peppercorns, and bouquet garni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Stewed Ox Cheek

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the ox cheek in warm water and cut the flesh off the bone with a sharp knife.

  2. Roll the flesh up and tie it with string.

  3. Place it in a stewpan with 1 oz of butter and brown it over heat.

  4. Wash and scrape the carrots, then cut them in half.

  5. Wash and peel the turnip, then cut it in half.

  6. Wash the celery and cut off the green tops.

  7. Peel the onions and insert 12 cloves into one of them.

Simmer

  1. Place the rolled ox cheek, bones, and all vegetables into a saucepan.

  2. Add mace, peppercorns, salt, and the bouquet garni.

  3. Pour in enough cold water to cover everything, about 6 quarts.

  4. Bring to a boil, skim, then reduce heat to simmer for 4 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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 rich, gelatinous meat that becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Butter
Browns the meat in the pan, adding color and a roasted savory flavor.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften into the stock over the long simmer.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the broth as they cook down.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil, skim, then reduce heat to simmer. Boiling vigorously makes the broth cloudy and can toughen the meat. Skimming removes foam and impurities, and a gentle simmer keeps the connective tissue breaking down slowly and the broth clear.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, onion, clove, butter, flour. 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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