Skip to main content
Main

Pickled Lamb's Tongues

Pickled lamb tongues are boiled, sliced, and preserved in vinegar with spices and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Pickled Lamb's Tongues

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tongues

  1. Boil the lamb's tongues in 1 quart of water with salt, thyme, celery seed, mustard seed, peppercorns, and cloves until very tender.

  2. Remove the tongues, skin, and trim them neatly.

  3. Cut the tongues lengthwise into pieces.

Pickle

  1. Place the pieces in a jar and pour boiling hot vinegar over them to cover.

  2. Layer the tongues with whole cloves, mustard seed, bay leaf, whole peppercorns or red peppers, and sliced onions.

  3. Let the mixture sit for 24 hours before using.

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. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Thyme + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together913 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb's tongues
Provide the meat that becomes tender when boiled and then pickled.
Vinegar
Acidifies the meat, preserving it and giving it a sharp, tangy flavor.
White onions
Add sharpness and aroma that mellow as they soak in the pickling liquid.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent, sharp flavor to the pickling mixture.

The step that matters

Boil until very tender. Tongue is a tough muscle with dense connective tissue. Long, gentle simmering breaks down collagen so the meat becomes tender. If it is undercooked, it stays chewy and will not soften later in the vinegar.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, thyme, celery, mustard, clove, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, thyme, celery, mustard, clove, vinegar, 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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes