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Sheep Tongues As Fricandeau

Braised sheep tongues served with a savory sauce of gravy, sweet herbs, onion, cloves, butter, parsley, ketchup, vinegar, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sheep Tongues As Fricandeau

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongues

  1. Boil the sheep tongues until nearly done.

  2. Peel and lard the tongues.

  3. Stew the tongues in good gravy with sweet herbs, onion, and cloves.

  4. Remove the tongues.

Make the glaze

  1. Boil the sauce down to a glaze.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare the sauce by melting butter in a clean pan until frothy. Add minced onion and chopped parsley to the pan.

  2. Pour a little water into the pan used for the glaze. Boil, stirring to remove the glaze. Combine the water with the onion and parsley.

  3. Season with ketchup and vinegar.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce into a dish.

  2. Place the tongues neatly on top.

  3. Garnish with sliced lemon before serving.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep tongues
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long boiling and stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the onion and parsley into the sauce.
Good gravy
Gives the tongues savoury depth and body as they stew.
Ketchup
Adds tangy, sweet-savoury seasoning to the finished sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce down to a glaze. Reducing the cooking liquid by evaporation concentrates its flavour and gelatin. If it is under-reduced the glaze stays thin and watery; if over-reduced it can scorch or turn overly salty and sticky.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, butter, parsley, ketchup, vinegar, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, butter, parsley, ketchup, vinegar, lemon. 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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