Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓
Tongue Cheese
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Boil the beef tongue, calves' livers, and salt pork until thoroughly cooked.
Mince the cooked meats very fine.
Season the mixture to taste with spices.
Set and serve
Press the mixture into a pan and allow it to cool.
Slice thin and serve on a napkin in a lunch dish.
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.
-
Beef + porktop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,690 recipes
Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
-
Liver + porktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,606 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).
-
Beef + livertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together431 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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 body of meat, setting into a firm, sliceable loaf when cooled.
- Calves' livers
- Adds richness and a deeper, more intense meaty flavour to the mixture.
- Salt pork
- Adds fat, which keeps the pressed mixture moist and helps it hold together when sliced.
The step that matters
Press the mixture into a pan and allow it to cool. Pressing packs the minced meats so they bind together, and slow cooling lets gelatin and fat set the loaf firmly enough to slice thin without crumbling.
“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.
You might also like
Roast Beef211 recipes
Beef Loaf175 recipes
Pork Cake107 recipes
Corned Beef87 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.