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Stewed Tongue, Fresh or Smoked

A stew of beef tongue simmered with spices, raisins, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Stewed Tongue, Fresh or Smoked

Ingredients

Directions

Parboil

  1. Place the tongue in a pot and cover it with water.

  2. Add the salt and parboil the tongue.

Season and stew

  1. Peel the tongue and rub it with mace, pepper, ginger, cloves, and allspice.

  2. Strain the water, return the tongue to the pot, and boil for three hours.

  3. Add the raisins, brown sugar, and vinegar.

  4. Half an hour before it is done, add the lemon cut into small pieces.

Serve

  1. Strain the gravy and serve.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
The main protein, which becomes tender through long, slow boiling.
Raisins
Add sweetness and plump up as they soften in the cooking liquid.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and balances the sweetness.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aromatic citrus flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Half an hour before it is done, add the lemon cut into small pieces.. Adding the lemon late keeps its bright acidity and fresh citrus aroma from cooking away over the long boil. Cut into small pieces, it releases more flavour into the gravy in the final half hour.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mace, pepper, ginger, clove, allspice, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mace, pepper, ginger, clove, allspice, sugar, vinegar. 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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