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Fresh Tongue

A braised tongue served with a sauce of raisins, currants, citron, port wine, currant jelly, butter, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and port wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 356 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Fresh Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tongue

  1. Boil the fresh tongue until tender.

  2. Slice the tongue into thin slices and keep it hot on a dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, melt together the raisins, currants, citron, port wine, currant jelly, butter, and vinegar.

  2. Pour the hot sauce over and around the tongue before serving.

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. Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Port wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Currant + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce, helping it cling to the tongue.
Port wine
Adds depth and a fruity, slightly sweet flavour to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the jelly and fruit.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, glossy texture.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Melting the sauce ingredients together. Heat should be gentle and the jelly fully melted so the butter and jelly combine smoothly rather than separating or scorching on the pan base. Stirring keeps the fruit from sticking.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (currant, port wine, butter, vinegar):

  1. Red currantfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, port wine, butter, 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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