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Fricassee of Calf's Tongues

A stew of boiled calf tongues, fried in flour, simmered with onion, thyme, parsley, and lemon in a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fricassee of Calf's Tongues

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongues

  1. Boil the tongues for 1 hour.

  2. Pare and cut the tongues into thick slices.

  3. Roll the slices in flour and fry in dripping for 5 minutes.

Make the fricassee

  1. In a saucepan, combine the tongues, sliced onion, thyme, and parsley.

  2. Cover with 1 cup of soup or gravy and simmer for 30 minutes, covered tightly.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the tongues and keep them warm.

  2. Strain the gravy, thicken it, and add the lemon slices.

  3. Boil for 1 minute and pour over the fricassee.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's tongues
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long boiling and simmering.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown when fried and helps thicken the gravy.
Dripping (or cooking fat)
Fries the floured slices, adding browning and rich flavour to the surface.
Soup or gravy
Provides the liquid that simmers the tongues and forms the sauce.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the simmering gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer covered tightly. Keeping the lid tight holds in steam so the liquid stays near a gentle simmer and the tough tongue slowly becomes tender without drying out or reducing too far.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, thyme, parsley, lemon. 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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