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Tongue a LA Terrapin

A braised tongue dish with onion, mace, flour, eggs, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Tongue a LA Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Boil the salted tongue until tender.

  2. Remove the tongue, split it, and insert cloves.

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine chopped onion, mace, brown flour, and enough water to cover the tongue.

  2. Add the tongue to the stewpan and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the chopped hard-boiled eggs into the stew.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in the wine.

  2. Serve hot, garnished with sliced hard-boiled eggs.

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 + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clove + winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-isoeugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Tongue
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through long simmering.
Hard-boiled eggs
Thicken the stew slightly and add a rich, mellow body to the sauce.
Brown flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich stew.

The step that matters

Stir in the wine just before serving. Alcohol and acidity are volatile and fade with prolonged heat, so adding wine at the end keeps its aroma and brightness, while a long boil would dull them.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, onion, flour, egg, wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, onion, flour, egg, wine. 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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