Why it works: Beef and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,435 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
To Pickle or Salt Tongues
Ingredients
Directions
Cure the tongue
Cut off the root of the beef tongue, leaving some fat, and cover it with salt in an earthenware dish for 24 hours.
Pour off the slimy matter, then rub the tongue with a mixture of salt, sugar, and saltpetre.
Turn and rub the tongue daily, renewing the mixture after a week.
After another week, the tongue is ready to eat or can be dried or smoked.
Make the pickle and finish
For pickling, dissolve salt, sugar, saltpetre, and sal prunella in a gallon of water in a stone or earthenware jar.
Submerge the tongue in the brine, ensuring it is fully covered.
After two weeks, remove the tongue, rub it dry, and hang it up to keep or use it directly from the pickle.
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.
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Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,435 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Saltpetre
- Helps keep the meat pink and gives it its characteristic cured flavour.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, helping preserve it during curing.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the salt and softens the harsh savour of the cure.
- Sal prunella
- Adds to the curing mixture as a preserving agent in the brine.
The step that matters
Pouring off the slimy matter before the first rub. The slimy film on the surface must be removed so the cure mixture can contact the meat directly and penetrate evenly. Leaving it in place can stop the salt and saltpetre from working properly.
“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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