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Ox Tongue

A boiled pickled ox tongue seasoned with saltpetre, brown sugar, pepper, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ox Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Wash the pickled tongue thoroughly and soak it in cold water for 48 hours.

  2. Rub the tongue with saltpetre and a little brown sugar, then season with whole pepper.

  3. Soak the tongue in cold salted water for another 4 days, turning it daily.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the tongue in water with a little of the brine, onion, carrot, bay leaf, and parsley.

  2. Once cooked, skin the tongue and place it in a deep dish.

  3. Pour the strained cooking liquid over the tongue.

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

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pickled ox tongue
Is the main meat, cured and seasoned so it becomes firm and well flavoured.
Saltpetre
Helps keep the meat pink and gives the cured flavour and colour.
Brown sugar
Balances the salt and adds a mild sweetness to the cure.
Whole pepper
Adds aromatic, spicy flavour that soaks into the meat during curing.

The step that matters

Soaking in cold salted water for 4 days. Soaking is what draws out excess salt and cure from the meat. Turning it daily keeps the brine in even contact so the tongue cures evenly rather than unevenly at the surface.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper, carrot, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, carrot, parsley. 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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