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Potted Ox-tongue

A preserved ox tongue dish seasoned with mace, nutmeg, cloves, and cayenne, then pounded with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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.

  2. The next day, cut the desired amount for potting from the tongue.

  3. Trim off the skin and rind, then mince the meat very small.

Pot the meat

  1. Pound the minced meat with 4 oz of butter for each pound of tongue.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of mace, ½ teaspoon of nutmeg, ½ teaspoon of cloves, and cayenne to taste. Mix well and taste; add more spices if needed.

  3. For firmness, mix in a few ounces of well-roasted meat, such as turkey or fowl.

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. 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 main meat, whose tender texture becomes the body of the potted dish.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, binding the pounded meat into a smooth, spreadable paste.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic flavor that complements the rich meat and butter.
Nutmeg
Adds a sweet, warm aroma that rounds out the spiced flavor.
Cloves
Adds a strong, pungent aroma that gives the spice blend depth.

The step that matters

Adding the spices. Spices are strong and their intensity builds as the paste sits, so tasting and adjusting after mixing matters. Cayenne in particular can overpower the dish if added too freely.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

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