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Deviled Tongue

Slices of tongue are seasoned with mustard, red pepper, salad oil, browned in butter, and served with brown bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Deviled Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle the slices of tongue with mustard and red pepper.

  2. Pour a little salad oil over the slices.

  3. Stack the slices together and let them marinate for 1 hour.

Cook and serve

  1. Brown the slices in hot butter.

  2. Serve with slices of brown bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Provides the main meat, which the marinade seasons and the browning finishes.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that penetrates the meat during marinating.
Salad oil
Carries the seasonings over the surface and helps keep the slices moist.
Butter
Browns the slices in hot fat, adding roasted flavour and colour.
Brown bread
Serves as a neutral, slightly sweet base to accompany the savoury meat.

The step that matters

Browning the slices in hot butter. Butter can burn before the surface browns if the heat is too high. Browning relies on the Maillard reaction, which needs a hot, dry surface, so the slices should be patted dry and cooked at a steady medium-high heat until golden.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, bread. 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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