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Neat’s Tongue with Fine Herbs

Neat's tongue sliced thin and seasoned with stock, vinegar, capers, herbs, and bread crumbs, then broiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 405 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Neat’s Tongue with Fine Herbs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cooked neat's tongue into very thin pieces.

  2. In a serving dish, combine stock, vinegar, capers, parsley, green onions, shallots, chervil, salt, and coarse pepper.

  3. Layer the slices of tongue in the dish.

  4. Add the same seasoning on top.

  5. Finish with bread crumbs.

Heat and serve

  1. Place the dish over the stove until the bottom layer becomes a gravy.

  2. Brown the top with a salamander.

  3. Serve with additional stock as a sauce.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Capers + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,737 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Neat's tongue
Provides the main meat, which is sliced thin so it layers and softens in the dish.
Stock
Supplies moisture that turns the bottom layer into a gravy and carries the flavour.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the rich meat.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns under the salamander.

The step that matters

Browning the top with a salamander. Bread crumbs brown quickly under intense direct heat, so the top can scorch before the dish is hot through. Watch closely and remove it once golden.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, capers, parsley, shallot, chervil, pepper, bread):

  1. Chivebetter flavor fit
  2. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  3. Mustardbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, capers, parsley, shallot, chervil, pepper, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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