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Ox-tongue Fresh

Roasted ox tongue served with plain vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Ox-tongue Fresh

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the ox tongue in warm water for several hours and clean it.

  2. Trim off all the fat and lard the thickest part with a rolling pin.

  3. Skewer the tongue slightly and tie the vegetables around it.

Roast

  1. Roast in a 350°F (175°C) oven for two hours and twenty minutes.

  2. Remove the paper before it is done to allow browning.

Serve

  1. Serve with any kind of plain vegetable.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 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
Main meat, a tough muscle that becomes tender with long, slow roasting.
Vegetables
Add moisture and aromatic flavor as they roast alongside the tongue.

The step that matters

Remove the paper before the tongue is done. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction, which needs a dry surface and direct heat. Removing the paper late lets the surface brown instead of staying pale and steamed.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery):

  1. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  2. Turnipbetter flavor fit
  3. Leekbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery. 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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