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Spiced Beef Tongue

A preserved beef tongue flavored with brown sugar, cloves, and salt, then pickled and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Spiced Beef Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cure

  1. Mix brown sugar, saltpetre, and ground cloves, then rub the mixture onto the tongue.

  2. Prepare a brine of coarse sea salt and water and submerge the tongue in it.

  3. Cover and pickle for two weeks.

Prepare

  1. Wash the tongue thoroughly and dry it with a cloth.

  2. Make a thin paste of flour and water and smear it over the tongue.

Bake and finish

  1. Place the tongue in a pan and bake slowly at 300°F, basting frequently with lard and hot water.

  2. Scrape off the paste and skim the fat.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the salty cure.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out and seasons the meat during the brine cure.
Saltpetre
Helps the cure keep the meat's pink colour during pickling.
Ground cloves
Adds aroma and warm spice flavour to the cured meat.
Flour
Forms a paste that shields the surface from drying and scorching while baking.
Lard
Adds fat for moisture and browning during the slow bake.

The step that matters

Baking slowly with frequent basting. Slow heat at a low oven temperature lets the tough connective tissue soften gradually. Frequent basting keeps the surface moist so it does not dry out or scorch over the long bake.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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