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To Roast Tongue and Uddek

A roast of beef tongue and udder seasoned with salt, saltpeter, cloves, served with gravy and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,038 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Roast Tongue and Uddek

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the beef tongue thoroughly.

  2. Rub the tongue with coarse sea salt and saltpeter; let it sit for 3 days.

Cook and roast

  1. Boil the tongue and the beef udder until both are tender.

  2. Tie the thick part of the tongue to the thin part of the udder.

  3. Stick a few cloves into the udder before roasting.

  4. Roast the tongue and udder until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy and currant jelly sauce.

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. Clove + curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Beef + curranttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,464 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Main meat; its dense muscle becomes tender after boiling and roasting.
Beef udder
Fatty meat that adds richness and moisture to the roast.
Saltpetre
Cures the tongue, giving it a firm texture and a pink colour.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity to balance the rich, savoury meat.

The step that matters

Boil until both meats are tender. Tongue and udder are tough connective-tissue cuts. Boiling long enough breaks down collagen so they become tender before roasting; undercooked meat stays chewy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove):

  1. Quincefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove. 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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