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Stewed Tongue

A slow‑cooked beef tongue simmered with bacon, herbs, and wine, served with its savory sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stewed Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dredge the bacon fillets with chopped parsley, coarse sea salt, black pepper, and a little allspice.

  2. Lard the tongue with the fillets.

Braise

  1. In a saucepan, combine sliced bacon, parsley, thyme, garlic, cloves, carrots, onions, salt, and pepper.

  2. Lay the tongue on top of the mixture.

  3. Wet with ⅓ cup of white wine and ⅓ cup of broth.

  4. Set on moderate heat and simmer for about 5 hours, keeping it well covered.

Serve

  1. Place the tongue on a dish and strain the sauce over it.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that slowly renders into the braising liquid and the tongue.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the braising liquid as they soften.
Onions
Build savoury depth and sweetness in the sauce as they cook down.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the braising liquid, helping to lift the flavours.
Broth
Provides moisture and savoury body so the tongue braises rather than dries.

The step that matters

Keep the tongue well covered while it simmers. A long, gentle simmer in a covered pan keeps the liquid from evaporating and lets the connective tissue soften slowly, so the meat becomes tender rather than dry or tough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, pepper, allspice, thyme, garlic, clove, carrot):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, pepper, allspice, thyme, garlic, clove, carrot. 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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