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Sauce for Braised Tongue

A sauce made with oleomargarine, corn flour, hot water from braising tongue, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and optional strained tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sauce for Braised Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the oleomargarine in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the corn flour until well browned.

  3. Gradually add the hot water, stirring continuously.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

  5. If desired, substitute part of the water with strained tomatoes.

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. Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sauce + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 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

Oleomargarine
Browns in the pan and adds fat and a rich, toasted flavor to the base.
Corn flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the hot water, giving it body.
Strained tomatoes
Adds acidity and body when substituted for part of the water.

The step that matters

Gradually add the hot water, stirring continuously. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the starch dispersed, so lumps do not form and the sauce thickens smoothly as the starch granules swell with heat.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, flour, pepper, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, flour, pepper, sauce. 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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