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Breaded Tongue

Breaded tongue is sliced boiled tongue coated in egg and breadcrumbs, fried until browned, served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Breaded Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold boiled tongue into slices 1/2 inch thick.

  2. Dip the slices in the beaten egg, then coat with seasoned breadcrumbs.

Cook and serve

  1. Sauté in hot butter (400°F / 200°C) until well browned.

  2. Serve with tomato sauce.

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

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

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled tongue
Is the main protein that is sliced and cooked through breading.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumbs to the tongue slices so the coating stays attached.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp golden coating that browns when sautéed in butter.
Butter
Conducts heat to brown the coating and adds rich flavor.

The step that matters

Sauté until well browned. Breadcrumb coatings brown through the Maillard reaction at high heat, so the butter must be hot before the slices go in. Too little heat leaves the coating pale and soggy rather than crisp.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, butter, 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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