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To Stew Tongue

A stew made from a tongue, seasoned with saltpetre, salt, soy sauce, mushroom ketchup, spices, and served with truffles, morels, and mushrooms.

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 Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Salt the tongue with saltpetre and common salt for 1 week, turning it every day.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the tongue until tender enough to peel.

  2. Stew the tongue in a moderately strong gravy seasoned with soy, mushroom ketchup, Cayenne, ground cloves, and additional salt if necessary.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
The main protein; curing and long stewing make it tender and well seasoned.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives it a characteristic pink colour during curing.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the week-long cure.
Soy sauce
Adds savoury depth and salty umami to the gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Boil the tongue until tender enough to peel. Undercooked tongue stays tough and its skin will not slip off cleanly. Boiling long enough breaks down the connective tissue so the meat becomes tender, and the skin loosens for peeling.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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