Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓
Tongue Cheese
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the meat
Boil the beef tongue, calves' livers, and salt pork until thoroughly cooked.
Mince the cooked meats very fine.
Season the mixture with spices to taste.
Set and serve
Press the mixture into a pan and allow it to cool.
Slice thin and serve on a napkin in a lunch dish.
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.
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Beef + porktop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,690 recipes
Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
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Liver + porktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,606 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).
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Beef + livertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together431 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Beef tongue
- Provides the main bulk of meat, which sets into a sliceable loaf once pressed and cooled.
- Calves' livers
- Adds richness and a deeper, more intense meaty flavour to the mixture.
- Salt pork
- Adds fat, which keeps the cooled mixture moist and helps it hold together when sliced.
The step that matters
Press the mixture into a pan and allow it to cool. Pressing removes air pockets and packs the minced meat together, while cooling lets the fat and gelatin set so the loaf holds its shape when sliced thin.
“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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