Skip to main content
Main

Deviled Tongue and Ham

A preserved beef tongue and ham mixture seasoned with spices, canned and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Deviled Tongue and Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Cure the beef tongue in a mixture of salt, sugar, and saltpetre for 45 days.

Prepare the meat

  1. Cook the meat for 1.5 hours, then remove the gullet skin and bones.

  2. Run the meat through a fine plate on a hasher.

  3. Mix in the spices and run through the hasher again.

Can and process

  1. Fill the mixture into cans: 3.5 oz in No. 4 cans and 5.5 oz in No. 2 cans.

  2. Place the cans in an open water vat for 5 minutes to exhaust.

  3. Close the vent and boil for 3 hours at 5 lb pressure.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Forms the meat base, giving the mixture its bulk and texture.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping preserve it and give it a pink colour.
Sugar
Balances the saltiness of the cure and softens its harshness.
Mixed spices
Provide the main aroma and warm, pungent flavour of the finished meat.

The step that matters

Close the vent and boil for 3 hours at 5 lb pressure. Sealed cans of meat must be heated thoroughly under pressure to destroy harmful microbes. Under-processing can leave spoilage or safety risks, so the full time and pressure should be held.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, mustard):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, mustard. 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

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes