Name: Boiled Tongue with Tomato Sauce
Ingredients: 1 tongue; ½ cup broth; 2 tablespoons flour; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; 1 small onion, chopped; 1 small carrot, chopped; salt to taste; pepper to taste; 1 can tomatoes, cooked and strained

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Boiled Tongue with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tongue

Boil the tongue until tender.

Make the sauce

In a pot, combine broth, flour, parsley, onion, carrot, salt, and pepper.
Add the strained tomatoes and simmer to create a sauce.

Serve

Place the tongue on a serving dish and pour the sauce over it.

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.

Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

Tongue: Is the main protein; boiling until tender breaks down its connective tissue.
Flour: Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Tomatoes: Provide acidity and body, giving the sauce its color and tangy flavor.
Broth: Supplies the liquid base and savory flavor for the sauce.
Onion: Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it softens in the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the sauce after adding the tomatoes. Simmering lets the flour fully thicken the liquid and mellows the raw tomato acidity. Heating too hard or too briefly can leave the sauce thin or harsh-tasting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, parsley, carrot, pepper, tomato):

Parsnipfits better
Capsicumfits better
Okrafits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, parsley, carrot, pepper, tomato. 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.

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Carrot Soup134 recipes

Cream of Tomato Soup107 recipes

Tomato Bisque61 recipes

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Boiled Tongue with Tomato Sauce