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Boiled Tongue

A boiled tongue served with a gravy of flour, catsup or vinegar, and optionally fried in egg and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and boil

  1. Scrape and wash the tongue very clean.

  2. Place it in a pot with 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt for every quart of water.

  3. Boil until the top looks clear and the tongue is very soft.

Cut and fry

  1. Once cold, cut it into pieces.

  2. Season and fry the pieces in egg and bread crumbs, or fry without egg and crumbs.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with a little flour and flavor with catsup or vinegar.

  2. Serve hot.

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

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

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,672 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vinegartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,652 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Tongue
Is the main ingredient; boiling softens its dense muscle until tender.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the pieces so they form a coating when fried.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating on the fried pieces.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the pieces.
Catsup or vinegar
Adds acidity and tang to the gravy.

The step that matters

Boil until very soft. Tongue is a dense, tough muscle with a lot of connective tissue. Long, gentle simmering in water is what breaks it down into tender meat, so stopping early leaves it firm and chewy.

“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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