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Potted Ox-tongue

A preserved ox tongue mixed with butter and spices, pressed into small pots and sealed with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Ox-tongue

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Boil the tongue until tender, then allow it to cool.

  2. Remove the rind and pound the tongue in a mortar until fine.

Season and pot

  1. Mix in the butter, cayenne, mace, nutmeg, and cloves.

  2. Press the mixture into small pots.

  3. Pour clarified butter on top to seal.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 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

Tongue
Forms the main body of the potted meat, giving it a fine, spreadable texture once pounded.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying the spices and helping the mixture hold together when chilled.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that cuts through the richness of the meat and butter.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic flavour to the meat.
Nutmeg
Contributes a warm, sweet aroma that complements the mace and cloves.
Cloves
Contributes a strong, warm aroma that rounds out the spice blend.

The step that matters

Pound the tongue until fine. Pounding breaks the cooked meat into a smooth, fine texture so it spreads evenly and absorbs the butter and spices. Coarse pieces leave a grainy, uneven potted meat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, nutmeg, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, clove. 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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