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To Stew Tongue

A stew made from a salted tongue cooked until tender and served with truffles, morels, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Stew Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Salt the tongue with saltpeter and common salt for one week, turning it daily.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the tongue until tender enough to peel.

  2. Stew the tongue in a moderately strong gravy.

  3. Season with soy sauce, mushroom catsup, Cayenne pepper, pounded cloves, and salt as necessary.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Is the main meat, which becomes tender through boiling and stewing.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping it keep its pink colour and firm texture during salting.
Common salt
Draws moisture out of the tongue and seasons it during the week-long cure.
Mushroom catsup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Boil the tongue until tender enough to peel. Cooking must be long and gentle enough to break down the tough connective tissue; stopping early leaves the skin hard to remove and the meat chewy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, mushroom, pepper, truffle, butter. 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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