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Hessian Stew

A hearty stew made from beef tongue, onions, carrots, turnips, and a blend of spices, beer, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Hessian Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Rub the tongue pieces with salt and pour hot water over them; stir and let cool.

  2. Scour the tongue with your hands and wash thoroughly in cold water.

  3. Dust the tongue with flour and fry until light brown with whole onions.

Stew

  1. Place the tongue in a pot with 1 cup of strong beer and rinse the frying pan with boiling water.

  2. Add the rinsed water, garlic, carrots, and turnips to the pot.

  3. Season with black pepper, Jamaica pepper, cayenne pepper, cloves, and salt.

  4. Let it stew for 3-4 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Half an hour before serving, remove the meat and some soup for gravy.

  2. Add more spices, mushroom ketchup, soy sauce, walnut pickle, coratch, and port wine to the pot.

  3. Boil together and thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour.

  4. Garnish with slices of thin toasted bread cut into triangles.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow stewing.
Flour
Light dusting that browns during frying and helps thicken the sauce.
Butter
Rolled in flour and stirred in to thicken the sauce into a smooth gravy.
Strong beer
Adds malty bitterness and depth to the stewing liquid.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and richness to the finished sauce.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the stew.

The step that matters

Boil together and thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour. Flour and butter must be fully cooked and whisked into simmering liquid; adding them cold or unmixed causes lumps and a raw floury taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, beer, garlic, carrot, turnip, pepper, clove):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beer, garlic, carrot, turnip, pepper, clove. 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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