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Fresh Tongue

Fresh tongue served hot with a sauce of butter, currant jelly, citron, raisins, almonds, dried currants, port wine, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Fresh Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tongue

  1. Select a fine fresh tongue and boil it until cooked through.

  2. Remove the skin from the tongue and serve it hot.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the currant jelly, citron, raisins, blanched almonds, and dried currants.

  2. Stir in the port wine and heat the mixture until warm.

  3. As you remove the sauce from the heat, add a dash of vinegar.

Serve

  1. Place the tongue on a deep meat dish and pour the sauce over it.

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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Port wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a rounded, smooth mouthfeel.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body, thickening the sauce as it melts into the mixture.
Raisins
Contribute concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the sauce.
Port wine
Adds depth and aroma, and its sugars help give the sauce a rich flavour.
Dried currants
Add tart-sweet fruitiness and a soft chewy texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar as the sauce leaves the heat. Vinegar is acidic and volatile, so adding it off the heat keeps its sharp brightness and balances the sweetness of the jelly and fruit without it cooking away.

“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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