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Potted Ox-tongue

A preserved dish made by mincing boiled ox tongue and seasoning it with spices and 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 unsmoked tongue until tender.

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

  3. Trim off the skin and rind, then weigh the meat.

Make the potted meat

  1. Mince the meat very small, then pound it with 4 oz of butter for each pound of tongue.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of mace, ½ teaspoon of nutmeg, ½ teaspoon of ground cloves, and a high seasoning of cayenne.

  3. Taste the mixture and add more spices if needed.

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

  5. Ensure the mixture is cool before serving.

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

Unsmoked tongue
Forms the main body of the potted meat and gives it its savoury flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, giving the pounded meat a smooth, rich texture.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour that complements the meat.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, sweet-spiced aroma to the mixture.
Ground cloves
Adds a strong, aromatic spice note that deepens the seasoning.

The step that matters

Mince and pound the meat with butter. Mincing very small and pounding with butter breaks the meat into a fine, even paste. Poorly worked meat stays coarse and separates, so the potted texture turns out grainy rather than smooth and spreadable.

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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