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Potted Ox-tongue

A mixture of minced ox tongue, butter, and spices, cooled and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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, then let it cool overnight.

  2. Trim off the skin and rind, then weigh the meat.

  3. Mince the meat very small, then pound it as fine as possible.

Season and finish

  1. Add 4 oz of butter for each pound of tongue, along with the spices. Mix well and taste.

  2. Add more spices if needed.

  3. For firmness, mix in a few ounces of well-roasted meat if desired.

  4. Ensure the mixture is less than milk-warm before serving.

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
Provides the main meat, whose fine texture forms the body of the potted dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps bind the pounded meat into a smooth, spreadable mixture.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour that complements the rich meat and butter.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, sweet aroma that rounds out the spiced flavour.
Cloves
Adds a strong, pungent aroma that contributes to the spiced flavour.

The step that matters

Pounding the meat fine. Mincing and pounding break the meat into very small particles, so the butter and spices distribute evenly and the texture becomes smooth and spreadable rather than coarse or stringy.

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.

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