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Tongue in Currant-juice

A braised tongue simmered in currant juice or jelly with butter, salt, pepper, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,856 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Tongue in Currant-juice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the root of the tongue and split it down not quite to the end.

Stew

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and fry the tongue in it.

  2. Add the currant juice or jelly, salt, pepper, and brown sugar.

  3. Stew the mixture together for three hours.

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 + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  5. Currant + peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Tongue
Is the main protein, becoming tender through long, slow stewing.
Currant juice or currant jelly
Provides the sweet-tart fruit flavour and body for the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for frying the tongue, helping it brown and carrying flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce, balancing the tartness of the currants.

The step that matters

Stew the mixture together for three hours. Tongue is a tough cut rich in connective tissue. Slow, gentle simmering over a long period breaks that tissue down into gelatin, making the meat tender. Rushing or boiling hard can leave it firm and stringy.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, sugar. 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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