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Ox-tongue, Potted

A dish of finely chopped ox tongue mixed with butter and spices, then pressed into pots and covered with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg 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 ↓

Ox-tongue, Potted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the ox-tongue finely.

Make the paste

  1. Pound the chopped tongue in a mortar, gradually adding clarified butter and the spices until smooth.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Pot and seal

  1. Press the mixture into pots and cover with the remaining clarified butter.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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 of the spread.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the spices, giving a smooth, spreadable texture.
Powdered mace
Contributes warm, aromatic flavour to the spread.
Ground cloves
Adds a strong, warm aroma and spiced flavour.
Ground nutmeg
Adds a sweet, warm aroma that rounds out the spices.
Cayenne pepper
Adds gentle heat to balance the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a fine sieve. Pounding alone leaves fibres and lumps; forcing the paste through a fine sieve breaks them down, giving the smooth, even texture the spread is meant to have.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Allspicebetter flavor fit
  3. Cardamombetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

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