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Tongue Soup

A hearty soup made with beef tongue, shin, bones, root vegetables, rice, and seasonings, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tongue Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine cold tongue, shin of beef, beef bones, carrots, turnips, onions, parsnip, celery, rice, salt, pepper, and water in a large pot.

  2. Simmer gently for about 4 hours until the gravy is extracted from the meat.

  3. Strain the soup and let it cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Skim off the fat when ready to serve.

  2. Add the soft parts of the tongue and a small amount of fresh carrot, turnip, and onion.

  3. Stew until the vegetables are tender and serve with toasted bread.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold tongue
Provides the main meat and rich, savory flavor to the broth.
Shin of beef
Adds collagen that breaks down during long simmering, giving the broth body.
Beef bones
Release gelatin and marrow flavor into the water, enriching the broth.
Rice
Thickens the soup slightly as its starch dissolves into the liquid.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat when ready to serve.. Fat rises and solidifies on cooled broth; removing it keeps the soup clean-tasting rather than greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, parsnip, celery, rice, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, parsnip, celery, rice, pepper. 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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