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Braised Tongue

Braised beef tongue cooked with butter, onions, turnip, carrot, herbs, and lemon, served with reduced gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Braised Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tongue

  1. Boil the tongue in water for 2 hours.

  2. Trim the boiled tongue.

  3. Tie the tip of the tongue against the thick part.

  4. Dust the tongue with flour.

  5. Brown the floured tongue in a hot pan with butter.

Braise

  1. Fry the onions, turnip, and carrot in butter until browned.

  2. Set the browned vegetables aside.

  3. Place the tongue and all other ingredients, except lemon juice, in a pot with a tight lid.

  4. Bake the pot in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

  5. Turn the tongue halfway through baking.

  6. Add lemon juice to the pot.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Transfer the tongue to a hot dish over hot water while reducing the gravy for 20-30 minutes.

  2. If the gravy is too thin, mix 1 heaping teaspoon of cornstarch with cold water.

  3. Stir the cornstarch mixture into the boiling gravy.

  4. Cook the thickened gravy for 2-3 minutes.

  5. Strain some gravy over the tongue.

  6. Serve the remaining gravy in a sauceboat.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  5. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Main protein that becomes tender during long, slow moist cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps brown the tongue and vegetables.
Flour
Coats the tongue to promote browning and thickens the gravy.
Onions
Break down during braising to add sweetness and body to the gravy.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the braising liquid.
Turnip
Contributes earthy flavor and body to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with cornstarch. Cornstarch must be mixed with cold water first and stirred into boiling gravy; adding it dry or to cool liquid causes lumps. It must then cook briefly so the starch swells and fully thickens the sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, flour, cinnamon, pepper, onion, turnip):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Raisinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, cinnamon, pepper, onion, turnip. 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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