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To Cure Tongues

A method of curing beef tongues with salt, sugar, saltpetre, pepper, and garlic, then drying and smoking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Cure Tongues

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Remove the root from the tongue near the gullet, leaving the fat underneath.

  2. Soak the root in salt and water overnight and clean it well.

  3. Sprinkle the tongue with salt and let it drain overnight.

Cure

  1. Mix salt, sugar, saltpetre, pepper, and garlic; rub this mixture into the tongue daily for a week.

  2. After a week, add another ½ cup of salt and continue rubbing daily.

  3. The tongue will be ready in 10 days if rubbed daily; otherwise, it will take 4 to 5 weeks.

Dry and cook

  1. When ready to dry, label the date on parchment and tie it on the tongue.

  2. Smoke the tongue for 3 days or hang it in a dry place.

  3. To cook, boil the tongue until tender, about 5 hours.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the tongue while helping preserve the meat during curing.
Coarse sugar
Balances the salt and adds a mild sweetness to the cured flavour.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the colour of the cured meat and inhibits spoilage bacteria during curing.
Garlic or shallot
Adds aroma and savoury flavour to the cure mixture.

The step that matters

Daily rubbing during the cure. Salt needs time to penetrate evenly and draw out moisture. Skipping daily rubbing can leave uneven curing, and the cure may take 4 to 5 weeks instead of 10 days.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper. 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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