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With Raisins

Calf tongues braised with raisins, wine, and aromatics, served in a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

With Raisins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongues

  1. Soak the calf tongues in water.

  2. Cover and cook slowly in 3 quarts of water with salt, lemon peel, bay leaf, cloves, onion, and pepper until tender.

  3. Remove the skin and slice the tongues.

Make the raisin gravy

  1. In a pan, brown the butter and flour, then add the tongue bouillon, white wine, raisins, and lemon juice.

  2. Cook for 30 minutes and season with sugar, salt, or lemon juice.

  3. Add the tongues to the gravy and heat without boiling until thick.

  4. Serve with potato dumplings.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf tongues
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering.
Butter
Browns with the flour to add rich, nutty flavor to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the bouillon.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the gravy.
Raisins
Add sweetness and soft, plump texture to the gravy.

The step that matters

Heat the tongues without boiling. Boiling the gravy after the tongues are added can make the thickened sauce break or turn grainy and can toughen the meat. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and the slices tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, lemon, white wine, butter, flour, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, lemon, white wine, butter, flour, clove. 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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