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
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Cure the tongue
Mix the salt and ground cloves.
Rub the mixture into the tongue.
Place the tongue in a jar of brine made from ¾ pound of salt dissolved in 2 quarts of water, using a weight to keep it submerged.
Let it sit in the brine for two weeks.
After two weeks, remove the tongue.
Wash the tongue well.
Dry the tongue with a cloth.
Bake and serve
Roll out a thin paste using flour and water.
Wrap the tongue in the paste.
Place the wrapped tongue in a pan.
Baste the wrapped tongue well with lard and water.
Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C).
When done, 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 aromatic spice flavour to the cured meat.
- Lard
- Basting fat that keeps the surface moist and promotes browning during baking.
- Flour
- Forms the thin paste wrapper that encloses the tongue while it bakes.
The step that matters
Keeping the tongue fully submerged in the brine. Any part of the tongue left above the brine can spoil or cure unevenly, because salt penetrates and preserves meat only where it contacts the brine. A weight keeps the tongue under the liquid for the full two weeks.
“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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