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Ox Tongue, Fresh, Stewed

A stew of fresh ox tongue simmered in a sauce of butter, flour, onion, parsley, capers, sardines, lemon, vinegar, sherry, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,037 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ox Tongue, Fresh, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Soak the fresh ox tongue for about 1 hour.

  2. Drain the tongue and place it in a saucepan with plenty of cold water.

  3. Bring the water to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer gently until cooked through.

  4. Remove the skin from the tongue.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, brown 1 tablespoon of flour in 2 ounces of butter.

  2. Add enough of the boiling liquid to make a sauce the thickness of cream.

  3. Stir in the minced onion, chopped parsley, bruised capers, sardines, sliced lemon, salt, and cayenne pepper.

Simmer and serve

  1. Simmer the tongue in this sauce for about 1 hour.

  2. Transfer the tongue to a hot dish.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil again, adding 1 tablespoon of vinegar and 1 glass of sherry or Madeira.

  4. Pour the sauce over the tongue and serve immediately.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tongue
The main meat; long gentle simmering makes it tender and cooked through.
Flour
Browned in butter and mixed with liquid, it thickens the sauce to a creamy body.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and, with the browned flour, gives the sauce richness and color.
Onion
Minced and simmered in the sauce, it adds savory aroma and background sweetness.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the rich, buttery sauce.
Sherry or madeira
Fortified wine that adds aroma and depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with the boiling liquid. Browned flour in butter forms a roux, and adding hot liquid gradually while stirring keeps it smooth instead of lumpy. The sauce thickens as the starch swells, so it should reach a creamy consistency before the tongue goes in.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, parsley, capers, lemon, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Kalebetter flavor fit
  3. Arrowrootbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, capers, lemon, pepper, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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