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Langue De Bœuf À LA Braise

A braised beef tongue cooked slowly with stock, wine, bay leaf, cloves, carrots, onions, and optional trimmings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Langue De Bœuf À LA Braise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Clean the tongue as directed in recipe No. 397.

  2. Parboil and skin the tongue.

  3. Lard the tongue across with lardons.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt and cooks' pepper.

Braise

  1. Place the tongue in a stewpan that fits it snugly.

  2. Cover the stewpan with good stock.

  3. Add a glass of wine.

  4. Season with a bay leaf, cloves, carrots, onions, and any meat trimmings.

  5. Cover the stewpan with paper.

  6. Place hot embers over the lid.

  7. Stew slowly for two and a half hours.

Serve

  1. Garnish the tongue with the roots.

  2. Serve with strained gravy, adding a little Espagnole.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Is the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Good stock
Provides the liquid that braises the tongue and builds the gravy's savoury body.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the braising liquid.
Carrots and onions
Release sweetness and aroma into the braising liquid and flavour the gravy.
Lardons (in the method)
Add fat that keeps the lean tongue moist during long cooking.

The step that matters

Stew slowly for two and a half hours. Gentle, low heat lets the tough connective tissue in the tongue break down into gelatin. Rapid boiling toughens the meat and dries the surface, so keep the liquid barely simmering.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, wine, clove, carrot, veal):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, wine, clove, carrot, veal. 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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