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Ox Tongue, Pickled

A preserved ox tongue pickled with peppercorns, basil, thyme, saltpetre, salprunella, sea salt, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Basil and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,768 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Ox Tongue, Pickled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pickle

  1. Soak and dry the ox tongue.

  2. Place the tongue in a deep earthen pan with peppercorns, basil, and thyme.

  3. Boil saltpetre, salprunella, coarse sea salt, and moist sugar in water for 20 minutes to make a pickle.

  4. Let the pickle cool completely, then cover the tongue with it.

Cure and finish

  1. Let it sit for 10 days to 2 weeks, depending on the season.

  2. After pickling, rub the tongue with a dry cloth.

  3. Cook immediately or hang to dry.

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. Basil + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Basil + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Thyme + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,682 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tongue
Is the meat being cured, so its texture is set by the brine over the curing period.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured tongue its characteristic pink colour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the meat and seasons it while helping preserve it during the cure.
Moist sugar
Balances the saltiness and adds mild sweetness to the pickle.

The step that matters

Let the pickle cool completely before covering the tongue. Pouring hot brine over meat can partly cook its surface and uneven curing can follow. A fully cooled pickle keeps the meat raw while the salt and cure penetrate evenly.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Oreganofits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against basil, sugar. 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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