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To Fricassee Tongue

A braised tongue dish cooked with butter, flour, egg yolks, and sweet herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Fricassee Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Pare off the outside of the boiled tongue and cut it into thin slices.

  2. Fry the slices in butter until browned.

Make the fricassee

  1. Add the slices to a pot with good gravy, sweet herbs, pepper, mace, and salt.

  2. Stew for half an hour.

  3. Strain the gravy.

  4. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter.

  5. Stir in the yolks of two eggs before serving.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled tongue
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the meat for the fricassee.
Butter
Browns the tongue slices and enriches the gravy with fat and flavor.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the tongue slices.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the gravy, giving it a smoother, richer texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the yolks of two eggs before serving. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle if the gravy boils after they are added. Keep the gravy hot but not boiling once the yolks go in.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, 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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