Name: Neat's Tongue in Cutlets, and Stewed Greens
Ingredients: 1 tongue; 2 spring cabbages; 1 tablespoon butter; ½ cup good stock; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; carrots for garnish

Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Neat's Tongue in Cutlets, and Stewed Greens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue and cabbage

Boil the tongue until tender, then slice it.
Slice the root to match the tongue slices.
Boil the spring cabbages, then squeeze them dry and chop finely.

Cook the cabbage

In a stew pan, melt the butter and add the chopped cabbages and stock.
Cook over low heat until the mixture is dry, seasoning with pepper and salt.

Serve

Place the cabbage mixture in the center of a serving dish and arrange the tongue slices around it.
Garnish with neatly cut carrots.

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.

Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + carrottop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,505 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + carrottop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,083 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue: Provides the main meat, sliced and arranged around the cabbage as the centrepiece of the dish.
Spring cabbages: Form the bulk of the centre mixture, becoming soft and concentrated once cooked down dry.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the cabbage as it cooks.
Good stock: Adds savoury moisture so the cabbage cooks down tender and well seasoned.

The step that matters

Cooking the cabbage until dry. Squeezing the cabbage dry before cooking and then reducing it over low heat keeps the mixture from being watery, so it holds its shape on the plate and the flavours concentrate.

Swap the cabbage

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

Capsicumfits better
Parsnipfits better
Potatofits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, carrot. 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.

Carrot Soup134 recipes

Red Cabbage65 recipes

Stewed Cabbage58 recipes

Baked Cabbage51 recipes

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Neat's Tongue in Cutlets, and Stewed Greens