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Braised Fresh Ox-tongue

Braised fresh ox tongue with vegetables and Madeira glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,173 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Braised Fresh Ox-tongue

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the tongue

  1. Blanch and trim the ox-tongue.

  2. Place the tongue in a braising pan with sliced carrots, turnip, celery, onions, cloves, bay leaf, mace, salt, pepper, and cooking brandy.

  3. Cover with stock and braise slowly until tender.

  4. Remove the tongue from the braising pan and place it in a separate pan.

Make the glaze

  1. Strain and skim the braising liquid.

  2. Mix the strained liquid with Madeira sauce and reduce to a glaze.

  3. Pour the glaze over the tongue.

  4. Keep the glazed tongue hot.

Slice and serve

  1. Slice the braised tongue into thin slices.

  2. Arrange the slices overlapping in the center of a dish.

  3. Cover the slices with glaze.

  4. Garnish with potato croquettes.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tongue
Main protein that becomes tender and silky through slow braising.
Madeira sauce
Adds depth and body to the glaze, along with browning and sweetness.
Stock
Provides the braising liquid that slowly softens the tongue and flavours the glaze.
Cooking brandy
Adds aromatic depth to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Braise slowly until tender. Tongue is a dense, collagen-rich muscle. Low, slow heat over a long time converts collagen to gelatin, which makes the meat tender and moist. Rushing with high heat leaves it tough.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, onion, clove, pepper, brandy):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, onion, clove, pepper, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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