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Pickled Beef Tongue

A pickled beef tongue prepared with vinegar, spices, and a sour cream gravy served with dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Beef Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pickle

  1. Combine onion, vinegar, water, cloves, allspice, bay leaf, lemon rind, carrot, celery root, and salt in a pot.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes and let cool.

  3. Place a tin pie plate on a gas flame. Put the tongue on the plate for a few minutes until the skin loosens, then peel it off.

  4. Wash the tongue well.

  5. Place the tongue in a dish and pour the cooled liquid with vegetables and seasoning over it.

  6. Let it stand for 2 days.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the tongue in the same liquid until tender.

  2. Remove the tongue.

  3. Combine sour cream and flour in a separate pot. Boil until smooth, then strain.

  4. Slice the tongue and place it in the gravy.

  5. Bring to a boil and serve with dumplings.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Allspice + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue (in the method)
Forms the meat that is pickled, then tenderized by simmering until soft.
Vinegar
Acidifies the pickling liquid, flavouring the meat and helping it keep its tang.
Sour cream
Forms the creamy base of the gravy, adding richness and a mild tang.
Flour
Thickens the sour cream so the gravy becomes smooth and coats the slices.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boil until smooth, then strain. Sour cream can curdle or separate when boiled. Stirring the flour in well and heating gently keeps the gravy smooth, and straining removes any lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, clove, allspice, lemon, carrot, celery, cream):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove, allspice, lemon, carrot, celery, cream. 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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