Name: Ox-tongue
Ingredients: 1 ox tongue; prepared spinach (or Brussels sprouts); Espagnole sauce (or half glaze)

Why it works: Spinach and sauce work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 756 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Ox-tongue

Ingredients

1 ox tongue
prepared spinach (or Brussels sprouts)
Espagnole sauce (or half glaze)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).
Warm the tongue in the oven for 30 minutes.
Glaze the tongue and place it on a serving dish.

Serve

Surround the tongue with prepared spinach or Brussels sprouts.
Pour a little Espagnole sauce or half glaze around the base.
Serve.

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.

Spinach + saucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together756 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox tongue: Is the main protein; warming in the oven gently brings it up to serving temperature.
Espagnole sauce: Adds savory depth and moisture to the plate around the tongue.
Half glaze: Adds concentrated meaty flavor and gloss to the plate around the tongue.

“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.