Skip to main content
Main

To Stew Sheeps' Tongues

A stew of sheep tongues simmered with stock, wine, herbs, mushrooms, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

To Stew Sheeps' Tongues

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongues

  1. Boil the sheep's tongues until the skin can be removed.

  2. Split the tongues without separating them.

Stew and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the tongues with stock, cullis or bread crumbs, white wine, parsley, cibol, mushrooms, garlic, butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes until the sauce is the desired consistency.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Mushroom + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's tongues
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender during boiling and simmering.
Cullis or bread crumbs
Thicken the sauce so it clings to the tongues.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.
Mushrooms
Contribute savoury, earthy flavour and body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, glossy sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering until the sauce is the desired consistency. Simmering reduces the liquid and lets the cullis or bread crumbs thicken the sauce. Too little time leaves it thin, while over-reduction can make it stick to the pan or turn too thick.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, white wine, parsley, onion, mushroom, garlic, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, white wine, parsley, onion, mushroom, garlic, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes