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Baked Tongue

A tender tongue baked in a savory sauce of butter, flour, tomatoes, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,719 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Baked Tongue

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Boil the tongue

  1. Boil the tongue in salted water until tender, adding cloves, bay leaf, and onion if desired.

  2. Remove the tongue from the water, peel off the skin, and return it to the water.

Make the sauce and bake

  1. About an hour before serving, place the tongue in a deep pan.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add flour and gradually stir in the strained cooking water.

  3. Add the stewed tomatoes and Worcestershire sauce, mixing well.

  4. Pour the sauce over the tongue, cover tightly, and bake at 350°F (175°C), 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. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Clove + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Is the main meat, which becomes tender through long simmering before baking.
Butter
Melted with flour to form a roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Combined with melted butter to form a roux that thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Stewed tomatoes
Add acidity and body, giving the sauce its color and tangy flavor.
Cooking water
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying flavor from the simmered tongue.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce. Flour must be cooked into the melted butter and stirred in gradually with the liquid to prevent lumps and to thicken the sauce evenly before it is poured over the tongue.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, butter, flour, tomato, sauce, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, butter, flour, tomato, sauce, mushroom. 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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