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Neat's Tongue with Fine Herbs

Neat's Tongue with Fine Herbs is thinly sliced tongue served gratinated with herbs, capers, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 405 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Neat's Tongue with Fine Herbs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the Neat's tongue into very thin slices.

  2. In a serving dish, combine stock, vinegar, capers, parsley, green onions, shallot, chervil, salt, coarse pepper, and bread crumbs.

Layer and gratin

  1. Arrange the slices of tongue in the dish, layering with the same seasoning on top.

  2. Finish with more bread crumbs.

  3. Place the dish over the stove until the bottom layer becomes a gratin.

  4. Serve with additional stock as a sauce and brown the top.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Capers + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Neat's tongue
Provides the meat, which is layered and warmed until the bottom forms a crisp gratin.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the stock and form a crust that browns into a gratin on top and underneath.
Stock
Moistens the layers and is served alongside as a sauce.
Capers
Add a sharp, salty acidity that cuts the richness of the tongue.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the meat and herbs.

The step that matters

Heating over the stove until the bottom becomes a gratin. Heat must be gentle enough to warm the layers and set the crumbs without scorching the bottom before the meat is hot through. Too much heat burns the crumbs, while too little leaves them soggy and pale.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, capers, parsley, shallot, chervil, pepper, bread):

  1. Chivebetter flavor fit
  2. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  3. Mustardbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, capers, parsley, shallot, chervil, pepper, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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