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Beef Tongue

A boiled and stewed beef tongue seasoned with salt, sugar, spices, soy sauce, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Salt the tongue with saltpetre and common salt for a week, turning it daily.

Boil

  1. Boil the tongue until tender enough to peel, about 2-3 hours.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the tongue in a moderately strong gravy seasoned with soy, mushroom ketchup, cayenne pepper, pounded cloves, and additional salt if needed.

  2. Serve with truffles, morels, and mushrooms stewed in gravy.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Saltpetre
Helps cure the meat, giving it a pink colour and a cured flavour.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the tongue during the week of curing.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the saltiness of the cure.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown when basted.
Gravy
Keeps the tongue moist and carries the seasonings while it stews.
Soy sauce
Adds savoury depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Boil until tender enough to peel. Long, gentle simmering converts tough collagen in the tongue into gelatin, making it tender. Undercooked meat stays tough and the skin will not release cleanly, while overboiling can make the meat fall apart.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar, pepper, clove, allspice, butter, sauce):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, pepper, clove, allspice, butter, sauce. 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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