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Roast Tongue

A dish of boiled and roasted beef tongue served with mashed potatoes and green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and peas are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,016 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Roast Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim excess fat from the tongue and wash it well.

  2. Boil the tongue in 2 cups of cold water with a little coarse sea salt until tender.

  3. Remove the skin from the tongue; it should peel off easily.

  4. Trim any remaining fat from the tongue.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat ghee in a pan and fry or roast the tongue until nicely browned.

  2. Serve with mashed potatoes and green peas.

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. Potato + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

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

  2. Ghee + potatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Ghee + peastop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together61 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Main protein; boiling makes it tender and frying gives it a browned surface.
Ghee
Fat for frying that carries heat and helps the surface brown.
Mashed potatoes
Soft side that adds moisture and starch to balance the rich meat.

The step that matters

Browning the tongue in ghee. The tongue must already be fully tender from boiling before it goes into the hot fat. Frying mainly browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, so a dry, hot surface is needed; too little heat leaves it pale and steamed.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ghee, potato):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, potato. 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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