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Braised Tongue

Braised tongue cooked with vegetables, stock, and seasonings, then baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tongue

  1. Boil and salt the tongue until tender, about 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Skin the tongue and remove any fat.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, cream together the flour and butter, then stir in the stock until well combined.

  2. Add the diced carrot, onion, potato, turnip, celery, parsley, bay leaves, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, and salt.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Bake

  1. Place the tongue in a baking dish and pour the stock mixture around it.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours, basting often.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Forms the main meat and becomes tender through long simmering and baking.
Flour
Thickens the stock mixture with butter, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps form the thickened base.
Stock
Provides the liquid that braises the tongue and forms the sauce.
Potato
Breaks down slightly in the liquid, adding starch and body to the sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours, basting often. The tongue must stay submerged in simmering liquid and be basted regularly so it braises slowly. This keeps the meat moist and lets connective tissue soften into tender gelatin, rather than drying out on the surface.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, carrot, potato, turnip, celery, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, carrot, potato, turnip, celery, parsley. 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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