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Boiled Tongue and Tomato Sauce

A boiled tongue served with a tomato sauce made from butter, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Tongue and Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the pickled tongue until well done, then peel it.

  2. In a saucepan, boil the can of tomatoes until reduced by half, then strain.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, rub together the butter, flour, and salt.

  2. Add the butter mixture to the strained tomatoes and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the tongue 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pickled tongue
Main protein; long boiling softens its tough muscle fibres until tender.
Tomatoes
Provide the sauce's acidity and body; reducing them concentrates flavour and thickens the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when the mixture is heated.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil after adding the butter mixture. Flour only thickens fully once the sauce reaches a boil and its starch swells. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and can leave a raw, floury taste.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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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