Skip to main content
Main

Potted Ox-tongue

A preserved ox tongue made by mincing and seasoning with butter, mace, nutmeg, cloves, cayenne, and optionally roasted meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the tongue

  1. Boil the ox tongue until tender.

  2. The next day, cut the desired amount for potting from the tongue.

  3. Remove the skin and rind.

  4. Weigh the meat.

Make the potted meat

  1. Mince the meat very small.

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

  3. Add the mace, nutmeg, cloves, and cayenne, mixing well.

  4. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.

  5. For added firmness, mix in a few ounces of well-roasted meat.

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 + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tongue
Forms the main body of the potted meat, giving it its substance and texture.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, making the pounded meat smooth and spreadable.
Well-roasted meat
Adds firmness to the mixture when included, as the record notes.

The step that matters

Pound the meat with the butter. Pounding until very fine lets the butter coat and bind the meat particles, producing a smooth, spreadable texture instead of a coarse or crumbly one.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes