Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Tongue

A slow‑cooked stew of beef tongue flavored with bacon, herbs, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 seasoned 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 over 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
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long, slow simmering.
Bacon
Adds fat and salty, savory flavor that seasons the meat as it renders.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich braising liquid.
Carrots
Contribute sweetness and body to the braising liquid and sauce.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle and the pan covered. Tongue is a tough cut rich in connective tissue. A low, covered simmer lets collagen slowly break down into gelatin, giving tender meat, while a hard boil toughens the muscle and reduces the liquid too quickly.

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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes