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Baked Tongue

A tongue seasoned with salt, sugar, spices, baked until tender and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Baked Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cure

  1. Season the tongue with coarse sea salt, saltpetre, brown sugar, pepper, cloves, mace, and allspice.

  2. Let the tongue cure for two weeks.

Bake and serve

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Place the tongue in a pan, add butter on top, and cover with bread crumbs.

  3. Bake until tender enough for a straw to easily go through it.

  4. Serve cold.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Is the main protein; curing and slow baking make it tender and sliceable.
Saltpetre
Helps the cured meat keep its pink colour and adds a characteristic cured flavour.
Brown sugar
Balances the salt in the cure and adds mild sweetness and depth.
Butter
Adds fat that moistens the tongue and helps the crumbs brown during baking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crust on top that protects the surface and adds some texture.

The step that matters

Bake until tender enough for a straw to easily go through it. Tongue is a tough muscle rich in connective tissue. Slow, gentle baking is needed to break that tissue down; stopping too early leaves it firm, while overbaking at high heat dries it out.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper, clove, allspice, butter, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, clove, allspice, butter, bread. 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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