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Baked Ox-Tongue

A baked ox tongue served with brown gravy, wine, and red‑currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked Ox-Tongue

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and parboil

  1. Soak the tongue in lukewarm water overnight.

  2. Trim and scrape the tongue.

  3. Stick cloves all over the tongue.

  4. Boil the tongue until half cooked, then drain it.

Bake and serve

  1. Brush the tongue with beaten egg yolks, then sprinkle it with breadcrumbs.

  2. Place the tongue in a baking dish.

  3. Bake until browned, basting with butter.

  4. Serve on a hot dish with rich brown gravy mixed with wine and red-currant jelly.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

  3. Wine + curranttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Clove + curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Flour + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Dense, tough muscle that becomes tender and rich through long soaking and cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and basting helps the surface brown evenly.
Beaten egg yolks
Act as a binder that helps the breadcrumbs stick and promotes browning.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on the outside of the tongue.
Red-currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a glossy body to the brown gravy.

The step that matters

Boil the tongue until half cooked. The tongue must be only partly cooked here, because the baking step finishes it. Boiling it fully would leave it dry and stringy after baking.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg, wine, currant):

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, wine, currant. 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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