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Beef Tongue in Casserole

A casserole of boiled beef tongue with carrots, onions, celery, parsley, and a savory sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Tongue in Casserole

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the tongue

  1. Wash the tongue quickly.

  2. Cover it with boiling water.

  3. Cook gently over a simmering burner for about 1.5 hours.

  4. Remove all skin and unsightly portions from the tongue.

Bake the casserole

  1. Place the tongue in a casserole with sliced carrots, minced onion, celery, and parsley.

  2. Add enough stock to cover the vegetables and season well.

  3. Place the casserole in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  4. After 1 hour, remove the cover and allow to brown for an additional 30 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. To make the sauce, combine 4 tablespoons of browned flour in butter with ½ cup finely chopped onions.

  2. Add strained stock from the tongue, 1 teaspoon sugar, some ketchup, a few drops of Worcestershire sauce, and a little lemon juice. Boil briefly.

  3. Add sliced 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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 meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Stock
Keeps the tongue and vegetables moist and flavors the casserole and sauce.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma to the braising liquid as they soften.
Browned flour (in the method)
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the sliced tongue.

The step that matters

Simmering the tongue gently. Boiling tongue hard toughens its proteins and tightens the muscle fibres. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue slowly break down, leaving the meat tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, celery, parsley, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, celery, parsley, pepper, vinegar. 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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