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To Stew Tongues

A stew made from cured beef tongues simmered in a seasoned gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Tongues

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the tongue

  1. Rub the tongue with saltpetre and coarse sea salt.

  2. Let it cure for one week, turning it daily.

Cook and stew

  1. Boil the tongue until tender, then peel it.

  2. Stew the peeled tongue in a moderately strong gravy.

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

  4. Serve with truffles, morels, and mushrooms.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Forms the main meat, which becomes tender through boiling and slow stewing.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, giving it a pink colour and a distinctive cured flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the tongue during the curing period.
Soy sauce
Adds savoury depth and salty umami to the gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, earthy flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Boil the tongue until tender, then peel it. Tongue has a tough outer skin that loosens only after thorough cooking. Peeling while it is still undercooked tears the meat, and stopping early leaves the connective tissue firm, so the stew turns out chewy rather than silky.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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