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Potted Tongue

A preserved tongue made by pounding, seasoning, and packing in clarified butter and beef suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potted Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Remove hard parts and gristle from the cold boiled tongue.

  2. Cut the tongue into small pieces and pound it in a mortar until it forms a paste.

Season and pot

  1. Season with a little cayenne and coarse sea salt, avoiding pepper.

  2. Add a quarter of the tongue's weight in clarified butter and mix thoroughly.

  3. Pack the mixture into small jars, pressing it down to within ½ inch of the top.

  4. Pour melted beef suet over the mixture to fill the jars.

Store

  1. Store in a cool place; it can be kept for several days.

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. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled tongue
Forms the meaty base that is pounded into a smooth paste.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture to the pounded meat.
Melted beef suet
Poured over the top to fill the jars and seal out air.

The step that matters

Pounding the tongue to a smooth paste. If the meat is left in large or fibrous pieces, the butter will not blend evenly and the potted tongue will have an uneven, stringy texture. Thorough pounding breaks the fibres down so the mixture spreads smoothly.

“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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