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Beef Tongue in Disguise

A beef tongue stuffed with a forcemeat mixture of veal, beef, and suet, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Tongue in Disguise

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tongue

  1. Slice the beef tongue and simmer in a pan with butter, parsley, eschalot, pepper, and salt for about 15 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Prepare the forcemeat by mixing equal parts veal, beef, and suet with soaked bread crumbs, milk, pepper, salt, parsley, and thyme.

  2. Combine with the yolks of 3 eggs.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread some forcemeat in the bottom of a serving dish, then place the tongue on top.

  2. Cover the tongue with the remaining forcemeat, shaping it like a tongue.

  3. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 45 minutes.

  4. Once golden, remove from the oven and pour off excess fat.

Serve

  1. Clean the dish and prepare a sauce with veal gravy, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and serve.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender during gentle simmering.
Veal
Adds soft, moist body to the forcemeat so it stays tender when baked.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and rich during baking.
Bread crumbs
Soak up milk and fat to bind the forcemeat and give a light texture.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat so it holds its shape when baked.
Veal gravy
Provides savoury liquid for the sauce served with the dish.

The step that matters

Pour off excess fat after baking. Suet and butter release fat as the forcemeat cooks. Draining it before serving keeps the dish from becoming greasy and lets the golden surface show clearly.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, parsley, pepper, veal, bread, milk):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, parsley, pepper, veal, bread, milk. 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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