Why it works: Clove and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,671 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Spiced Tongue
Ingredients
Directions
Cure the tongue
Rub the salt and ground cloves into the tongue.
Place the tongue in a jar of brine made with ¾ pound of salt and 2 quarts of water, using a weight to keep it submerged.
Let it sit in the brine for 2 weeks.
After 2 weeks, remove the tongue, wash it well, and dry it with a cloth.
Bake and serve
Roll out a thin paste made of flour and water, and wrap the tongue in it.
Place the wrapped tongue in a pan to bake, basting well with lard and water.
Bake slowly until done, then remove the paste and skin before serving.
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.
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Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,671 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Coarse sea salt
- Cures the tongue by drawing out moisture and seasoning the meat through the brine.
- Ground cloves
- Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the surface of the tongue.
- Lard
- Basting fat that keeps the tongue moist and promotes browning during baking.
- Flour and water paste
- Forms a sealed crust that traps moisture around the tongue while it bakes.
The step that matters
Keeping the tongue submerged in brine. If the tongue floats above the brine, the exposed part will not cure evenly and may spoil. A weight keeps the whole piece in contact with the brine so the salt penetrates uniformly over the two-week cure.
“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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