Skip to main content
Main

To Stew Tongue

A stew of beef tongue flavored with saltpetre, common salt, soy sauce, mushroom catsup, cayenne pepper, ground cloves, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Stew Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Salt the tongue with saltpetre and common salt for one week, turning it every day.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the tongue until tender enough to peel.

  2. Stew the tongue in a moderately strong gravy.

  3. Season the gravy with soy sauce, mushroom catsup, Cayenne pepper, ground cloves, and coarse sea salt if necessary.

  4. Serve with truffles, morels, and mushrooms.

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 + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + mushroomtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Main protein; curing and long stewing make it tender and fully flavoured.
Saltpetre
Curing agent that preserves the meat and gives it a rosy colour during the week-long cure.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the cure, firming its texture.
Mushroom catsup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami depth to the gravy.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth that rounds out the gravy.

The step that matters

Boil the tongue until tender enough to peel. Cooking must be long enough to break down the tough connective tissue in the tongue; undercooked meat stays firm and hard to peel, while slow, gentle simmering keeps it moist.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, mushroom, pepper, truffle. 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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes