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Tongue Toast

Tongue Toast is a dish of finely chopped tongue mixed with egg yolk, cream, parsley, salt, and nutmeg, spread on buttered toast and browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tongue Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the remains of a tongue finely.

  2. Mix with the egg yolk, cream, chopped parsley, salt, and nutmeg.

  3. Heat the mixture in a stew-pan.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread over slices of hot buttered toast.

  2. Sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  3. Cut into fingers.

  4. Brown them before the fire.

  5. Dish up on a folded napkin or dish paper.

  6. Garnish with parsley.

  7. Serve.

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. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue remains
Provides the main meaty bulk of the savoury spread.
Egg yolk
Binds the mixture and helps it set smooth and rich when heated.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the filling spreadable.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping when heated in front of the fire.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture in a stew-pan. Gentle heat lets the egg yolk thicken the cream and meat without scrambling. If it runs too hot, the yolk curdles and the spread turns grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, nutmeg, bread, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, nutmeg, bread, butter. 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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