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Stewed Tongue and Raisins

A slow‑cooked tongue stewed with raisins, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stewed Tongue and Raisins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Wash the tongue and place it in enough water to cover it.

  2. Add a handful of coarse sea salt.

  3. Parboil the tongue to make peeling easier.

  4. Rub the tongue with black pepper, ginger, mace, cloves, and allspice.

  5. Strain the water.

Stew

  1. Return the tongue to the pot with the same water.

  2. Add the raisins, brown sugar, and vinegar.

  3. One hour before it is done, add the sliced lemon, whole cloves, allspice, strips of citron, and onion if desired.

  4. Stew for 4 hours.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Is the main meat, becoming tender through long, slow stewing.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a plump, moist texture to the stewing liquid.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramel notes that balance the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced stewing liquid.
Lemon
Contributes acidity and fresh citrus aroma to the stew.

The step that matters

Timing the lemon, cloves, allspice and citron. Adding these aromatics one hour before the end keeps their flavours bright; cooking them for the full four hours can make citrus peel bitter and spices dull or muddy.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, ginger, mace, clove, allspice, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ginger, mace, clove, allspice, sugar, vinegar. 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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