Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Fresh Tongue

A stew of fresh beef tongue simmered with salt, spices, vegetables, and a mustard‑ketchup‑Worcestershire gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Stewed Fresh Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Soak the tongue in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Boil the tongue for 3 hours.

  3. Set the boiled tongue aside to cool.

Stew

  1. Place the tongue in a stew pan.

  2. Cover the tongue with stock.

  3. Add salt, cayenne pepper, cloves, turnip, onion, and celery.

  4. Chop the vegetables very fine.

  5. Stew gently for 1.5 hours.

  6. Remove the tongue from the stew.

Make the gravy

  1. Add mustard, ketchup, and Worcestershire sauce to the gravy.

  2. Melt butter in a pan.

  3. Mix the melted butter with flour.

  4. Add the butter‑flour mixture to the gravy.

  5. Boil the gravy until smooth.

Serve

  1. Return the tongue to the gravy until thoroughly hot.

  2. Serve hot, pouring the sauce over the tongue.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh tongue
Is the main meat, becoming tender through long boiling and gentle stewing.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock mixture into a smooth gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries the flour to thicken the gravy.
Onion
Builds savoury flavour in the stewing liquid as it softens.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour to the stewed gravy.

The step that matters

Boil the tongue for 3 hours. Tongue is a tough muscle, and a long gentle simmer is needed to break down connective tissue so it becomes tender. Cutting the time short leaves it firm and chewy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clove, turnip, onion, celery, mustard, ketchup):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, turnip, onion, celery, mustard, ketchup. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes