Skip to main content
Main

Beef Tongue Ragout

A braised beef tongue served in a seasoned sauce with pickled vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ketchup and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Beef Tongue Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tongue

  1. Boil the tongue in salted water until it can be peeled.

  2. Return the tongue to the pan with oil, carrot, onion, eschalot, peppercorns, and thyme.

  3. Cover and stew until tender.

  4. Remove the tongue.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the cooking liquid.

  2. Thicken with flour.

  3. Season with ketchup, anchovy sauce, lemon juice, and white wine.

  4. Reduce the sauce until rich and flavorful.

Finish and serve

  1. Slice it.

  2. Dip each slice in egg yolks.

  3. Fry the slices until pale brown.

  4. Arrange the tongue slices to resemble a whole tongue on a serving dish.

  5. Pour the sauce around it.

  6. Garnish with pickled vegetables.

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. Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 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

Beef tongue
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long stewing.
Egg yolks
Coat the slices so they brown in the frying and add richness.
Flour
Thickens the strained cooking liquid into a sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce.
Oil
Carries flavour during stewing and helps the slices brown when fried.

The step that matters

Reduce the sauce until rich and flavorful. Reducing concentrates the flavour of the strained liquid and wine. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin and weak, while over-reducing makes it salty and sharp once the anchovy sauce and ketchup are already in.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, onion, egg, flour, ketchup, anchovy):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, egg, flour, ketchup, anchovy. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes