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Tongue Baked

A pickled tongue baked with butter and flour crust, served hot or cold with parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tongue Baked

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the tongue

  1. Wash and soak the pickled tongue.

  2. Place the tongue in a dish just large enough for it.

  3. Dot the tongue with small pieces of butter.

  4. Cover with a crust made of flour and water.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until tender, about 3 to 4 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the skin from the tongue.

  2. Secure the tongue to a board with skewers through the root and tip.

  3. If serving cold, glaze the tongue, trim the root, and add a paper frill around it.

  4. Garnish with parsley before serving.

  5. If serving hot, place on a hot dish with vegetables like Brussels sprouts or cauliflower.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pickled tongue
Is the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow baking.
Butter
Dotted over the tongue, it adds richness and moisture as it melts during baking.
Flour
Forms the crust with water that encloses the tongue and holds in moisture while baking.
Water
Combines with flour to make the crust that seals the tongue during baking.

The step that matters

Bake until fully tender. Pickled tongue is tough connective tissue that softens only with long, low heat. Stopping early leaves it firm, so it should be checked for tenderness before serving.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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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