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Beef Tongue

A braised beef tongue cooked with bacon, herbs, and vegetables, served with its sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Beef Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Soak the beef tongue in cold water for 24 hours in winter or 12 hours in summer, changing the water every 6 hours.

  2. Boil the tongue in water for 10 minutes, then remove the tongue and skim off any impurities.

  3. Dredge square fillets of bacon in a mixture of chopped parsley, chives, salt, pepper, and a little allspice.

  4. Lard the tongue with the bacon fillets.

Braise

  1. In a crockery stew pan, combine diced bacon, parsley, thyme, sweet basil, bay leaves, garlic, cloves, carrots, onions, salt, and pepper.

  2. Place the tongue on top of the mixture.

  3. Add white wine and broth.

  4. Cover and simmer on moderate heat for about 5 hours.

Serve

  1. Place the cooked tongue on a dish.

  2. Strain the sauce over the tongue.

  3. 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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  4. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Forms the main meat, becoming tender through long, slow simmering.
Bacon
Larding fillets add fat and savoury flavour, while diced bacon flavours the braising liquid.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the braising liquid.
Broth
Provides the liquid that cooks the tongue and forms the sauce.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the braising liquid as they soften.
Onions
Soften and add sweetness and depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the tongue gently. Simmering on moderate heat for about 5 hours lets connective tissue break down slowly into gelatin, making the meat tender. A rapid boil toughens the surface and can leave the meat dry and stringy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, thyme, basil, garlic, carrot, onion):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Oreganofits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, thyme, basil, garlic, carrot, onion. 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.

More beef tongue recipes

Boiled 58Pickled 14Baked 13Braised 13Roasted 12Smoked 12 See all 42 →

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