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Smoked Tongue

Smoked beef tongue is a cured meat prepared by boiling, smoking, and seasoning with cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Smoked Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the beef tongue and soak it in cold water overnight.

  2. The next morning, place the tongue in a two-gallon pot and cover it with boiling water.

Cook and finish

  1. Cook gently for five to six hours.

  2. Once cooled, remove the skin and slice the tongue into thin slices.

  3. Chop any remaining scraps, season with cayenne pepper, and use for sandwiches.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Is the main meat; long gentle cooking turns its tough connective tissue tender.

The step that matters

Cook gently for five to six hours. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil lets the tough connective tissue soften slowly, so the meat stays tender instead of stringy or dry.

“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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