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To Boil a Smoked Tongue

Boiled smoked tongue served with mashed potatoes and parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,855 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Boil a Smoked Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and simmer

  1. Soak the smoked tongue in cold water overnight or for 24 hours if very hard and dry.

  2. Place the tongue in a pot of cold water and set over low heat for 1 hour before boiling.

  3. Simmer the tongue for 3.5 to 4 hours until tender, probing with a fork to check doneness.

Serve

  1. Serve the tongue with mashed potatoes around it and garnish with parsley.

  2. For a decorative presentation, rub the tongue with egg yolk, sprinkle with bread crumbs, baste with butter, and brown it before the fire.

  3. Cover the root with sprigs of parsley and serve with slices of currant jelly instead of mashed potatoes.

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. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Binds the bread crumb coating and promotes an even golden browning on the surface.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the crumb coating brown and stay moist.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, browned coating on the outside of the tongue.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender. Smoked tongue is dense connective tissue, and it only becomes tender after a long, gentle simmer. Cooking too briefly or at a hard boil leaves it tough or stringy, so probe with a fork before serving.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, egg, bread, butter. 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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