Name: Tongue, Roasted
Ingredients: 1 salted tongue; red wine for basting; butter for basting; rich gravy for serving; sweet sauce for serving

Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Tongue, Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Parboil the salted tongue for about 10 days.

Roast and serve

Roast the tongue, basting initially with red wine.
Finish by basting with butter.
Serve with rich gravy and sweet sauce.

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.

Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Red wine + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,599 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Red wine + saucetop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together322 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Salted tongue: Is the main protein, and its long parboil is what softens it before roasting.
Red wine: Basting with it early adds moisture and flavour to the surface as the tongue roasts.
Butter: Basting with butter at the end adds fat, richness and gentle browning to the surface.

“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.