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Braised Tongue

Braised beef tongue cooked with carrots, onions, celery, parsley, and a prepared sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tongue

  1. Place the beef tongue in a fireless cooker vessel.

  2. Heat the beef tongue until boiling.

  3. Transfer the beef tongue to a fireless cooker with a hot plate.

  4. Leave the beef tongue for two to three hours.

  5. Remove the beef tongue.

  6. Peel off the skin and roots of the beef tongue.

Braise

  1. Return the beef tongue to the fireless cooker pan.

  2. Surround the beef tongue with the diced vegetables.

  3. Add the prepared sauce to the cooker.

  4. Cover the cooker closely.

  5. Reheat the pot.

  6. Return the pot to the fireless cooker.

  7. Bake for an additional two to three 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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
Its connective tissue softens during long, moist cooking, leaving the meat tender.
Carrots
Soften during braising and add sweetness and body to the sauce.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding aroma and depth to the sauce.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavor to the braising liquid as it softens.
Sauce
Keeps the meat moist during long cooking and carries the dish's flavor.

The step that matters

Holding the tongue hot in the fireless cooker. Tough connective tissue breaks down into gelatin only over prolonged moist heat. If the meat cools too early or the cooker is not kept closed, the tongue may stay firm and dry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, parsley, celery, sauce):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, parsley, celery, sauce. 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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