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Boiled Beef Tongue

A boiled beef tongue preserved with salt, pepper, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boiled Beef Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Wash the fresh tongue and cover it with water in a pot.

  2. Add ½ cup of coarse sea salt and 1 small red pepper.

  3. Add more water as it evaporates to keep the tongue nearly covered until it can be easily pierced with a fork.

  4. Remove the tongue from the pot.

  5. Peel the skin if you want to use it soon; otherwise leave the skin on for future use.

  6. Soak salt tongues overnight.

  7. Omit the salt when boiling.

Finish in the sweet vinegar liquid

  1. Place the peeled tongue in a saucepan with 1 cup of water, ½ cup of vinegar, and 4 tablespoons of sugar, and cook until the liquid evaporates.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Beef + vinegartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,895 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it simmers in water.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich meat.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Keep the tongue covered while boiling. As water evaporates, exposed meat can cook unevenly and toughen, so topping up the water keeps the tongue submerged and cooking gently until a fork pierces it easily.

“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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