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Langue De Bceuf Piquee Et Rotie

A roasted beef tongue seasoned with bacon, herbs, and spices, served with sauce piquante.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Langue De Bceuf Piquee Et Rotie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tongue

  1. Soak the beef tongue in water for 24 hours, changing the water several times.

  2. Scald the tongue to remove the skin.

  3. Lard the tongue with bacon seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, and shallots.

Stew and cool

  1. Stew the tongue with beef stock, slices of bacon, sweet herbs, onions, and cloves.

  2. When three-quarters cooked, remove the tongue and let it cool.

  3. Lard the inside with large pieces of bacon and the outside with small pieces.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the tongue at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour.

  2. Serve with sauce piquante.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Is the main cut; long soaking and stewing soften its dense, firm meat.
Bacon
Larding adds fat and savoury flavour that keeps the lean tongue moist as it roasts.
Beef stock
Braises the tongue during stewing, adding moisture and savoury depth.
Shallots
Add mild sweet aromatic flavour to the seasoned bacon used for larding.

The step that matters

Roast the tongue at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour. The tongue is already partly cooked and cooled, so the roast mainly browns and crisps the outside. Too long a roast dries the meat, so watch the surface and stop once it is golden.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, shallot, clove, sauce):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, shallot, clove, 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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