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Baked Tongue

A tender beef tongue baked in a brown sauce of butter, flour, onion, bay leaf, peppercorns, Worcestershire sauce, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tongue

  1. Simmer the tongue(s) in plenty of well-salted water until tender and easily pierced with a fork.

  2. Remove the skin and membrane from the tongue(s).

Make the sauce

  1. In a roasting pan or skillet, melt the butter and stir in the flour until browned.

  2. Add the essence from the tongue(s), minced onion, bay leaf, peppercorns, Worcestershire sauce, and tomato ketchup.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the tongue(s) in the sauce and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  2. Serve hot or cold, pouring the brown sauce over the tongue(s) if cooled.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Main protein; slow simmering makes it tender enough to pierce easily.
Flour
Browned with butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Butter
Fat that carries the flour and adds rich flavour to the roux.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and sweetness as it cooks into the sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth to the brown sauce.
Tomato ketchup
Adds acidity and sweetness, deepening the colour and flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. Cooking the flour until it turns brown develops nutty flavour and colour in the roux. Stopping too early leaves a pale, raw-tasting sauce, while overcooking can scorch it and make it bitter.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, flour, onion, sauce, ketchup, potato):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, onion, sauce, ketchup, potato. 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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