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Tongue in Aspic

A chilled dish of boiled tongue set in layers of brown aspic with vegetables and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Tongue in Aspic

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Cook the fresh tongue in boiling water until tender.

  2. Remove the skin and roots.

  3. Run a skewer through the tip and fleshy part to keep the tongue in shape. Once cool, remove the skewer.

Make the aspic mould

  1. Place a round pan in ice water.

  2. Cover the bottom of the pan with brown aspic jelly.

  3. Let the aspic firm up.

  4. Decorate the firm layer with cooked carrot, turnip, beet cut into fancy shapes, and parsley.

  5. When the decoration is firm, place the tongue upside down in the pan.

  6. Add more aspic jelly.

  7. Repeat layering until all ingredients are used, allowing each layer to firm up.

  8. Chill thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Turn out onto a serving dish.

  2. Garnish the base with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh tongue
Forms the central meat, which is set in the jelly and sliced for serving.
Brown aspic jelly
Sets into a clear gelatin that holds the tongue and vegetables together in layers.
Cooked carrot
Adds colour and shape to the decorative layer set within the aspic.
Cooked turnip
Adds colour and shape to the decorative layer set within the aspic.
Cooked beet
Adds deep colour and shape to the decorative layer set within the aspic.

The step that matters

Let each aspic layer firm up before adding the next. Aspic is a gelatin that sets as it cools. If a layer is still liquid when the next is added, the decorations can float or shift and the layers blur together.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipthe original
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley. 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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