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Potted Ox-tongue

A seasoned, chopped ox tongue mixed with mace, cloves, nutmeg, and optionally roasted meat, served hot over fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Prepare the meat

  1. Finely chop the cooked ox tongue.

  2. Mix in the mace, ground cloves, and ground nutmeg, then beat the spices into the meat until well combined.

Finish and serve

  1. If needed, add a few ounces of well-roasted meat for firmness.

  2. Pour the mixture hot over meats like fowl, partridges, or pheasants.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Nutmeg + meattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,656 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Clove + meattop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 main body of the potted meat, giving it substance and flavor.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the meat.
Ground cloves
Contributes a strong, warm aroma and spiced flavor.
Ground nutmeg
Adds sweet, warm aroma that rounds out the spice blend.

The step that matters

Beating the spices into the meat. Spices must be evenly distributed through the finely chopped meat; uneven mixing leaves pockets of strong flavor and bland areas, so the spread tastes inconsistent.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, nutmeg, 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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