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Escalloped Tongue

A baked tongue dish with parsley, capers, butter, stock, onion juice, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Escalloped Tongue

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the chopped tongue, parsley, salt, capers, and 2 tablespoons of butter.

  3. Butter a baking dish and cover the bottom with bread crumbs.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the tongue mixture on top of the bread crumbs.

  2. Pour the stock and onion juice over the tongue mixture.

  3. Sprinkle additional bread crumbs on top and dot with remaining butter.

  4. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked tongue
Provides the main meaty body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crumbs brown in the oven.
Stock
Adds moisture so the mixture stays tender while baking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping and a base that soaks up moisture.

The step that matters

Sprinkling the top crumbs and dotting with butter. Butter on the crumb topping carries heat and browning, so an evenly covered, buttered top gives a uniform golden crust rather than dry or pale patches.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, capers, butter, bread. 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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