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Braized Ox Tongue

Braised ox tongue with vegetables, stock, and brandy, served with cherry sauce and potato quenelles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Braized Ox Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Scald the ox tongue in boiling water for 10 minutes.

  2. Immerse the tongue in cold water, then remove the root and excess fat.

Braise

  1. Place the tongue in a stewpan with the carrot, onion, celery, bouquet garni, cloves, and mace.

  2. Add the brandy and enough stock to cover the tongue.

  3. Braise gently on low heat for 2.5 hours.

  4. Remove the tongue from the braise and trim it.

  5. Strain the braising liquid through a sieve, removing grease, and reduce it to half.

Glaze and serve

  1. About 30 minutes before serving, simmer the tongue in its glaze until warmed through.

  2. Serve the tongue with cherry sauce underneath and garnish with potato quenelles.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Ox tongue
Is the main meat, becoming tender and rich during long gentle braising.
Brandy
Adds aromatic depth to the braising liquid.
Stock
Provides the braising liquid that gently cooks the tongue and forms the reduced glaze.
Carrot, onion, and celery
Aromatic vegetables that flavour the braising liquid as they cook.

The step that matters

Braise gently on low heat. Connective tissue in the tongue breaks down into gelatin slowly at low, steady heat. A fast boil toughens the meat and can leave it stringy, so the liquid should only simmer gently.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, celery, clove, brandy, potato, cherry):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, celery, clove, brandy, potato, cherry. 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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