Name: Beef Tongue
Ingredients: corned beef tongue; water; 1 can of tomatoes; 1 onion; 1 carrot; salt; pepper; 2 tablespoons of flour

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Soak the corned beef tongue for a few hours before boiling.

Cook the tongue

Boil the tongue until done, then peel it.

Serve

For a hot serving, make a sauce with tomatoes, onion, carrot, salt, pepper, and flour; cook and strain it, then pour over the tongue.
For a cold serving, place a weight on the tongue; when ready to serve, cut it into very thin slices.

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.

Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,606 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corned beef tongue: Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long boiling.
Flour: Thickens the tomato sauce so it coats the tongue.
Tomatoes: Form the base of the sauce, adding acidity and body.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, tomato, carrot, pepper, flour):

Capsicumfits better
Okrafits better
Parsnipfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tomato, carrot, pepper, flour. 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.