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To Stew Tongue

A stew of beef tongue simmered in gravy with soy sauce, mushroom ketchup, spices, and served with truffles, morels, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Stew Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Salt the tongue with saltpetre and common salt for a week, turning it daily.

  2. Boil the tongue until tender enough to peel.

Stew and season

  1. Stew the tongue in a moderately strong gravy.

  2. Season with soy sauce, mushroom ketchup, Cayenne pepper, pounded cloves, and additional salt if needed.

Serve

  1. Serve with truffles, morels, and mushrooms stewed in gravy.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 the long salting and slow stewing make tender and rich.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping it keep its pink colour and firm texture during salting.
Soy sauce
Adds savoury depth and salty umami to the stewing gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated mushroom flavour and savoury depth to the gravy.
Morels
Add earthy, aromatic flavour and texture to the finished serving.
Truffles
Add a intense, aromatic earthy aroma to the finished serving.

The step that matters

Boiling until tender enough to peel. Cooking must go far enough to soften the tough connective tissue and skin, but overcooking makes the meat fall apart. Testing for tenderness by peeling helps the cook stop at the right point.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, mushroom, ketchup, pepper, truffle):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, mushroom, ketchup, pepper, truffle. 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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