Skip to main content
Main

Spiced Beef Tongue

A preserved beef tongue seasoned with brown sugar, saltpetre, cloves, and brined for two weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Spiced Beef Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the tongue

  1. Mix brown sugar, saltpetre, and ground cloves, and rub the mixture into the tongue.

  2. Prepare a brine of coarse sea salt and water, and submerge the tongue in it.

  3. Cover the tongue and pickle it for two weeks.

Prepare for baking

  1. After two weeks, wash the tongue well and dry it with a cloth.

  2. Roll out a thin paste using flour and water, and smear the paste over the tongue.

  3. Place the tongue in a pan.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake slowly, basting with lard and hot water until done.

  2. Scrape off the paste.

  3. Skim the surface.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps flavour the cure.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the brine cure.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its pink colour during curing.
Ground cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the cure.
Lard
Adds fat and moisture to the surface while the tongue bakes.

The step that matters

Bake slowly, basting with lard and hot water until done. Slow heat lets the tough tongue become tender without drying out. Regular basting keeps the surface moist and prevents the meat from drying as the connective tissue breaks down.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour):

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes