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Stewed Tongue

A tongue stewed with bacon, herbs, garlic, carrots, onions, wine, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stewed Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dredge the bacon fillets with parsley, salt, pepper, and allspice.

  2. Lard the tongue with the bacon fillets.

Stew

  1. In a saucepan, combine sliced bacon, parsley, thyme, garlic, cloves, carrots, onions, salt, and pepper.

  2. Place the tongue on top of the mixture.

  3. Wet with ⅓ cup white wine and ⅓ cup broth.

  4. Set on moderate heat and simmer for about 5 hours, keeping it covered.

Serve

  1. Transfer the tongue to a dish and strain 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue (in the method)
Is the main cut, becoming tender through long, slow, moist simmering.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that slowly runs into the tongue and the sauce.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the braising liquid as they soften.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic depth to the sauce as they cook down.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the braising liquid, helping build flavor.

The step that matters

Keeping the simmer gentle and covered. A low, steady simmer with the pot covered keeps the moisture in and turns the tough tongue tender over hours. Boiling hard would toughen the meat and reduce the liquid too quickly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, pepper, allspice, thyme, garlic, clove, carrot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, pepper, allspice, thyme, garlic, clove, carrot. 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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