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Stewed Tongue

A dish of tongue stewed with bacon, herbs, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Dredge the bacon fillets with chopped parsley, coarse sea salt, black pepper, and a little allspice.

  2. Lard the tongue with the bacon fillets.

Stew

  1. In a saucepan, combine sliced bacon, parsley, thyme, garlic, cloves, carrots, onions, salt, and pepper.

  2. Lay the tongue on top of the mixture and add white wine and broth.

  3. Set the saucepan on moderate heat and simmer for about 5 hours, keeping it covered.

Serve

  1. Remove the tongue and strain the sauce over it 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Is the main cut; long covered simmering turns its tough muscle tender.
Bacon
Lards the meat and melts fat into the stew, adding moisture and savory flavor.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the braising liquid.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the sauce as they soften.
Onions
Add sweetness and depth to the braising liquid as they soften.

The step that matters

Simmer gently while covered. Tongue is a tough, collagen-rich muscle that needs long, low, moist heat to break down and become tender. Boiling hard or uncovering it too early dries the meat and can leave it chewy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, pepper, allspice, thyme, garlic, clove, carrot):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, pepper, allspice, thyme, garlic, clove, carrot. 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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