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Beef Tongue

A boiled corned beef tongue served hot with a tomato, onion, carrot sauce or cold in thin slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 the tongue

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

  2. Cook the tongue until done, then peel it.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a sauce with the tomatoes, onion, carrot, salt, pepper, and flour.

  2. Cook the sauce well and strain.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the tongue.

  2. For a cold serving, place a weight on the tongue.

  3. 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.

  1. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. 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
Is the main meat, so it sets the body and flavour of the dish.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and body to the sauce that coats the tongue.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the tongue.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and sweetness to the sauce as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce well and strain. Cooking the sauce long enough lets the flour fully thicken it and the vegetables soften and break down. Straining removes the solids so the sauce is smooth and coats the meat evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. 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.

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