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Fresh Tongue, Boiled

A boiled tongue seasoned with lemon or vinegar, cloves, and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Fresh Tongue, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tongue in plenty of cold water overnight to freshen it if salted, or to blanch it if fresh.

  2. The next day, place the tongue in cold water for salted tongues or boiling water for fresh tongues.

Cook

  1. Boil for 20 minutes per pound from the time it starts boiling.

  2. Add the lemon or vinegar, cloves, and peppercorns to the pot to enhance flavor.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooked, remove the tongue, peel off the skin, and return it to the pot to keep warm, or let it cool in the liquid if serving cold.

  2. Slice the tongue into long slices starting near the tip.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Beef + lemontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,278 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
A dense, tough muscle that becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Lemon or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the cooking liquid and the meat.
Whole cloves
Contribute a warm, spicy aroma to the cooking liquid.
Whole peppercorns
Contribute a sharp, pungent aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Timing the boil. Tongue is a thick, connective-tissue-rich muscle that only turns tender with long, steady cooking. Counting the time from when the liquid starts boiling, and cooking for the full 20 minutes per pound, helps prevent a firm, chewy result.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove):

  1. Quincefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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