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Beef Tongue Piquant

A boiled beef tongue served with a piquant sauce of flour, butter, stock, paprika, lemon juice, raisins, and cucumber pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Beef Tongue Piquant

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tongue

  1. Place the tongue in a kettle and cover with boiling water.

  2. Add the onion, carrot, celery, red pepper, and salt.

  3. Cover and cook until tender.

  4. Remove the tongue from the kettle.

  5. Peel off the skin of the tongue.

  6. Cut off the root of the tongue.

  7. Return the tongue to the kettle.

  8. Reheat the tongue.

Make the sauce

  1. Brown the flour in the butter.

  2. Add the brown stock.

  3. Cook the sauce for five minutes.

  4. Season the sauce with salt.

  5. Season the sauce with paprika.

  6. Season the sauce with lemon juice.

  7. Add the chopped cucumber pickle to the sauce.

  8. Add the seeded raisins to the sauce.

  9. Mix the sauce thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Serve the hot sauce with the sliced tongue.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Is the main protein, becoming tender when cooked slowly in liquid.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when browned in butter and blended with stock.
Butter
Carries the flour's browning and adds richness to the sauce.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury depth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens and sharpens the sauce.
Cucumber pickle
Adds sharp, tangy acidity and crunch to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the tongue until tender. Tongue is a tough, dense muscle that needs long, gentle cooking in liquid to break down its connective tissue. Stopping early leaves it firm and chewy, and peeling is easier once it is fully cooked.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, carrot, celery, pepper, flour, butter):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, carrot, celery, pepper, flour, butter. 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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