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Tongue Soup

A clear soup made from boiled tongue liquor, bones, vegetables, and dried tongue, served with toasted sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Tongue Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Strain and skim the liquor from the boiled tongue and place it in a stewpan with the tongue trimmings and any available bones.

  2. Bring the liquid to a boil. Skim carefully.

  3. Let it simmer gently for 3-4 hours.

Add the vegetables

  1. Add the carrot, turnip, onion, celery, and cayenne.

  2. Simmer for an additional hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup.

  2. Let it cool to remove the fat.

  3. Reheat the soup, adding diced carrot, diced turnip, and grated dried tongue.

  4. Serve with toasted sippets.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 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 liquor
Provides the main meaty flavour and body of the soup.
Bones or trimmings of fowl or veal
Add gelatin and depth of flavour during the long simmer.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the stock.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and colour to the soup.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savoury background flavour to the stock.
Dried tongue
Adds concentrated, salty, smoky meat flavour when grated into the soup.

The step that matters

Let it cool to remove the fat. Fat floats and solidifies as the soup cools, so it can be lifted off cleanly. Skipping this step leaves a greasy, heavy soup once reheated.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, turnip, celery):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, turnip, celery. 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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