Name: Salmi of Tongue with Tomato Sauce
Ingredients: remains of cooked tongue; ½ cup liquor from canned tomatoes; gravy; browned flour (optional)

Why it works: Tomato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,065 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Salmi of Tongue with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

remains of cooked tongue
½ cup liquor from canned tomatoes
gravy
browned flour (optional)

Directions

Prepare

Slice the cooked tongue neatly.
Heat the remaining gravy in a saucepan.

Make the sauce

Add ½ cup of liquor from canned tomatoes to the gravy.
If the sauce is too thin, thicken it with a little browned flour.
Bring the sauce to a boil.

Simmer and serve

Drop the pieces of tongue into the boiling sauce and let them simmer for about 15 minutes.

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.

Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,065 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked tongue: Provides the main meat, which is gently warmed and tenderised as it simmers in the sauce.
Liquor from canned tomatoes: Adds tomato flavour and acidity, and thins the gravy into a tomato sauce.
Gravy: Forms the base of the sauce, carrying moisture and savoury flavour to the tongue.
Browned flour: Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, slightly nutty flavour if the sauce is too thin.

“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.