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Potted Ox-tongue

A spreadable dish made from cooked ox tongue seasoned with mace, cloves, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg 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

  1. Finely pound the cooked ox tongue until smooth.

  2. Add mace, ground cloves, ground nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and coarse sea salt to the meat and mix well until all spices are incorporated.

  3. Gradually add milk until the mixture reaches a spreadable consistency.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 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

Cooked ox tongue
Forms the savoury meat base that the spices and milk are worked into.
Milk
Adds moisture so the pounded meat becomes soft and spreadable.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic flavour to the meat.
Ground nutmeg
Contributes a warm, aromatic flavour to the meat.

The step that matters

Gradually add milk until spreadable. Adding milk all at once can make the mixture too loose or wet. Adding it slowly lets you stop when the paste reaches a spreadable texture, since the meat's moisture absorption varies.

Swap the mace

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

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

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