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To Roast a Fresh Tongue

A roasted beef tongue served with gravy and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Roast a Fresh Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tongue in lukewarm water for 10 to 12 hours until it has thoroughly disgorged.

  2. Trim and scrape the tongue.

  3. Stick the cloves into the tongue.

Cook and roast

  1. Boil the tongue slowly for 2 to 3 hours, depending on its size.

  2. Remove the tongue and brush it with the egg yolks.

  3. Sprinkle the tongue with bread crumbs.

  4. Insert a long iron skewer through the tongue and roast it until golden brown, basting constantly with butter.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish with ½ pint of good gravy poured around it and red currant jelly on the side.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Clove + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,129 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,045 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Is the main meat, which becomes tender through long slow boiling before roasting.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown during basting.
Eggs
Egg yolks brushed on the tongue help the bread crumbs adhere and form a golden crust.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating on the outside of the tongue.
Cloves
Add a warm, aromatic spice flavour that penetrates the meat.

The step that matters

Roast until golden brown while basting. The tongue is already cooked by boiling, so the roasting stage is only for browning and crisping the crust. Constant basting with butter keeps the surface moist and encourages even Maillard browning, while the crumb coating can scorch if the heat is too high.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, egg. 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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