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Baked Tongue

A dish of beef tongue baked with onions, parsley, cracker crumbs, spices, and bacon, then cooled in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Parboil and skin the tongue, then trim it neatly.

Fill and roll

  1. Mix the minced onions, parsley, cracker crumbs, cayenne, mace, and cloves.

  2. Spread the mixture over the tongue and cover with thin slices of bacon.

  3. Roll the tongue with the thick part in the middle.

Bake and press

  1. Place the rolled tongue in a small baking pan.

  2. Cover the tongue with broth and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 3 to 4 hours.

  3. Once done, place it in a mold and press until cold.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during long, slow baking.
Boiled onions
Add moisture and savory flavor to the stuffing mixture.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the stuffing so it holds together when rolled.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor as it covers and bastes the tongue during baking.
Broth
Keeps the tongue moist and tender during long, slow baking.

The step that matters

Bake low and slow until tender. Tongue is a tough, collagen-rich muscle. Slow baking at a low temperature in liquid converts collagen into gelatin, making the meat tender. Too high a heat dries the meat out and leaves it tough.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, parsley, pepper, clove):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, parsley, pepper, clove. 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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