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Sauce

Sauce for Boiled Tongue

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, stock, salt, pepper, mushroom and tomato catsup, served over boiled tongue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,719 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Sauce for Boiled Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, brown the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and continue to brown.

  3. Stir in the stock and bring to a boil.

  4. Remove from heat and add salt, pepper, mushroom catsup, and tomato catsup.

Finish and serve

  1. Bring to a boiling point again, then pour over the boiled tongue and serve.

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. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Browns with the flour to add a nutty, toasted flavour and fat to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the other flavours.
Mushroom catsup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the sauce.
Tomato catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity for a tangy balance.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. The roux must be cooked long enough to lose its raw starchy taste and develop color, but not so long that it scorches and turns bitter. Stirring keeps it even.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, mushroom. 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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