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Langue De Boeuf Piquee. — Neat's Tongue Larded.

A beef tongue larded with bacon and spices, braised and glazed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Langue De Boeuf Piquee. — Neat's Tongue Larded.

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Remove the root and gullet from the tongue and rub it with coarse sea salt.

  2. Hang the tongue to drain.

  3. Wipe the tongue the next day.

  4. Soak the tongue in salt for one day.

Prepare and lard

  1. Boil the tongue for half an hour.

  2. Blanch and remove the skin.

  3. Roll fresh-cured fat bacon in a seasoning of pepper, salt, cloves, mace, cinnamon, nutmeg, parsley, knotted marjoram, chives, and minced garlic.

  4. Lard the tongue all over, leaving a space from the root to the tip.

Braise and serve

  1. Braise the tongue.

  2. Glaze the tongue.

  3. Cut the tongue in two, except at the ends.

  4. Arrange the halves on a dish in the shape of a heart.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Nutmeg + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Main protein; salting and long gentle cooking make it tender and sliceable.
Coarse sea salt
Cures the tongue by drawing out moisture and seasoning the meat deeply.
Fresh-cured fat bacon
Lardons threaded through the meat add fat and moisture during braising.
Cloves
Aromatic spice that flavours the lardoon seasoning and the braised meat.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and sweetens during braising.

The step that matters

Lard the tongue all over, leaving a space from the root to the tip.. Larding threads fat through lean meat so it stays moist during long braising. Spacing the lardons evenly keeps the fat distributed and the slices intact.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, parsley, marjoram, chive):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, parsley, marjoram, chive. 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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