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Ox Tongue, Fresh, Larded

A braised ox tongue larded with bacon, simmered with onions, pepper, salt, butter, flour, lemon juice, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Ox Tongue, Fresh, Larded

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Soak the tongue and boil it gently for about three hours.

  2. Remove the rough skin and lard the upper part of the tongue with strips of fat bacon.

Stew

  1. Return the tongue to the saucepan with enough of the boiling liquid to cover it.

  2. Add the fried button onions, pepper, salt, and butter rolled in flour.

  3. Stew gently for one hour.

  4. A quarter of an hour before serving, add the lemon juice and port wine.

Serve

  1. Serve the tongue on a hot dish with the gravy poured 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.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Ox tongue
Is the main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle boiling and stewing.
Fat bacon
Strips larded into the tongue add richness and moisture as the meat cooks.
Butter
Rolled in flour, it enriches the gravy and helps thicken it as it stews.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy that coats the tongue.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the gravy when added near the end.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Simmering the tongue gently. Boiling hard toughens the meat's proteins and can break the tongue apart. A gentle simmer lets the connective tissue slowly soften, so the meat becomes tender.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, lemon, port wine. 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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