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Pressed Tongue

A dish of boiled beef tongue, spiced and pressed into a mold, then set with vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pressed Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tongue

  1. Cover the beef tongue with cold water and simmer for 4 hours.

  2. Remove the tongue and let it cool.

  3. Boil the cooking liquid until reduced to 1 pint.

Press and set

  1. Chop the tongue into small pieces.

  2. Add the spices and salt to the chopped tongue and mix well.

  3. Press the mixture into a square can or mold.

  4. Add the vinegar to the boiling liquid and pour it over the meat.

  5. Press down and set in a cool place for 10 hours.

Serve

  1. Loosen the sides, carefully turn it out, and slice thin when ready to serve.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 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

Beef tongue
Provides the main meat, which becomes firm and sliceable after long simmering and pressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps balance the rich spiced meat.
Salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out flavour during the pressed setting.

The step that matters

Press down and set in a cool place for 10 hours. Pressing while the meat is still warm and then chilling it lets the chopped pieces bind into a firm mass that holds its shape when sliced. Skipping the cold set leaves the slices crumbly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, mace, cinnamon, allspice, pepper, 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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