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Potted Tongue or Ham

A preserved tongue or ham mixed with butter, spices, and clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Potted Tongue or Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and cut the tongue or ham into pieces.

Make the potted mixture

  1. Pound it in a mortar with the fresh butter.

  2. Add pepper, nutmeg, and mace to the mixture.

Pot and seal

  1. Transfer the mixture into pots.

  2. Pour clarified butter on top and seal tightly.

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 + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tongue or cold ham
Provides the main meaty body and savoury flavour of the potted mixture.
Fresh butter
Binds the pounded meat into a smooth, spreadable paste and adds richness.
Clarified butter
Forms a sealed top layer that excludes air and helps preserve the potted mixture.

The step that matters

Pour clarified butter on top and seal tightly. The clarified butter layer must fully cover the mixture with no gaps, because exposure to air lets the surface spoil faster and dries it out.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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