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Roast Tongue and Udder

A dish of boiled and roasted beef tongue and cow udder served with gravy and currant jelly sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,650 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Roast Tongue and Udder

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the tongue

  1. Clean the tongue well and rub it with salt and saltpetre.

  2. Let the tongue sit for three days.

Cook the tongue and udder

  1. Boil the tongue until it is tender.

  2. Boil the udder until tender as well.

  3. Let both the tongue and udder cool.

Roast and serve

  1. Tie the thick part of the tongue to the thin part of the udder.

  2. Roast them together until cooked through.

  3. Serve with gravy and currant jelly 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Beef + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,650 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Beef + curranttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,464 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Currant + saucetop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together628 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Forms the main body of the roast, becoming tender after boiling and then roasting.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat during curing and gives it a pink, cured colour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the curing rest.
Young udder with some fat
Adds fat and richness, helping the roast stay moist as it cooks.

The step that matters

Let the tongue sit for three days. The salt and saltpetre need time to penetrate the thick meat evenly. A shorter rest leaves the centre under-seasoned and less cured, so the cured colour and flavour will be uneven.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sauce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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