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Tongue Larded

A pickled tongue larded with bacon, seasoned, braised, glazed, and served with a brown sauce of capers, gherkins, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tongue Larded

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Cut off the root of the pickled tongue and place it in a pan covered with water.

  2. Boil for 25 minutes, then remove and dip in scalding water to blanch and remove the skin.

Season and lard

  1. Cut the fat bacon into strips for larding.

  2. Mix pounded sweet herbs, minced eschalot, mace, cayenne pepper, white pepper, and coarse sea salt for seasoning.

  3. Sprinkle the seasoning on the bacon strips, leaving a line down the center of the tongue.

  4. Lard the tongue all over with the bacon strips.

Braise and serve

  1. Braise the tongue, then glaze it, keeping it attached at both ends.

  2. Prepare brown sauce with minced capers, sliced gherkins, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Pour the sauce into a dish, lay the tongue on top, and serve hot.

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. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Pickled tongue
Is the main piece of meat, cooked until tender and then larded.
Fat bacon
Strips threaded through the tongue add richness and moisture as the meat cooks.
Brown sauce
Forms the savoury base that the tongue is served in, adding depth and moisture.
Minced capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the rich meat and sauce.
Sliced pickled gherkins
Add a sharp, sour bite that balances the richness of the dish.

The step that matters

Glazing the braised tongue. The tongue must stay whole and attached at both ends during braising and glazing, or it will fall apart. Gentle, moist heat keeps the connective tissue softening without drying the meat.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, mace, pepper, sauce, capers, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, mace, pepper, sauce, capers, 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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