Name: Boiled Tongue with Tomatosauce
Ingredients: 1 beef tongue; ½ cup broth; 2 tablespoons flour; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; 1 small onion, chopped; 1 small carrot, chopped; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 1 can of tomatoes, cooked and strained

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Boiled Tongue with Tomatosauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tongue

Boil the beef tongue until tender.

Make the sauce

In a separate pot, combine broth, flour, parsley, onion, carrot, salt, and pepper, then cook until the mixture thickens.
Add the strained tomatoes to the sauce and stir well.

Serve

Slice the tongue and lay it on a dish, then pour the sauce over it.

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.

Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,606 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 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 protein, becoming tender and sliceable through long simmering.
Flour: Thickens the broth into a sauce as its starch gelatinizes with heat.
Tomatoes: Provide acidity, body and color to the sauce.
Onion: Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the sauce.
Carrot: Adds gentle sweetness and body to the sauce base.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce until it thickens. Flour must be cooked long enough with the hot liquid for its starch to swell and thicken. Stopping early leaves a raw, pasty taste and a thin sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, parsley, carrot, pepper, tomato):

Capsicumfits better
Parsnipfits better
Okrafits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, parsley, carrot, pepper, tomato. 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.

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Roast Beef211 recipes

Beef Loaf175 recipes

Carrot Soup134 recipes

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Boiled Tongue with Tomatosauce