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Beef Tongue Larded A-LA-prusse

A braised beef tongue larded with bacon, cooked with silver onions, wine, flour, sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Tongue Larded A-LA-prusse

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Boil the tongue gently for three hours.

  2. Peel and lard the tongue with bacon.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the silver onions in the liquor from boiling the tongue.

  2. Add the wine, flour, sugar, and lemon juice.

  3. Stew the mixture together for another hour.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Main meat; long gentle simmering makes it tender.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that helps keep the lean tongue moist.
Silver onions
Frying softens and sweetens them and adds flavour to the sauce.
Wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the sauce as it stews.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquor into a smooth sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the mixture gently for an hour. Gentle, low heat lets collagen in the tongue break down slowly, so the meat becomes tender. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can scorch or break the sauce, so keep it at a bare simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, wine, flour, sugar, lemon):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, wine, flour, sugar, lemon. 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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