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Potted Ox-tongue

A preserved ox tongue made by boiling, mincing, seasoning, and mixing with butter and spices.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tongue

  1. Boil the ox tongue until tender.

  2. Let it cool overnight.

  3. Trim off the skin and rind.

Make the potted meat

  1. Weigh the meat, then mince it very small.

  2. Pound it as fine as possible with the butter.

  3. Add the mace, nutmeg, cloves, and cayenne to the meat mixture.

  4. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.

  5. Mix in a few ounces of well-roasted meat, such as turkey or chicken, for added firmness.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Butter and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tongue
Provides the meat that forms the bulk and chewy structure of the paste.
Butter
Adds fat that coats the meat and gives the paste a smooth, spreadable texture.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic flavour that defines the potted meat.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, sweet aroma that rounds out the spiced flavour.

The step that matters

Pounding the meat with the butter. Working the meat as fine as possible with the butter lets the fat coat and break up the muscle fibres, producing a smooth, spreadable paste. If the meat stays coarse, the texture will be grainy and uneven.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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