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Tongue Toast

A dish of minced boiled tongue mixed with cream or milk and egg yolks, served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Tongue Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mince the cold boiled tongue finely.

  2. Mix the minced tongue with cream or milk.

  3. For every ½ cup of the mixture, add the well-beaten yolks of 2 eggs.

  4. Place the mixture over low heat and let it simmer for 1-2 minutes.

Prepare the toast

  1. Prepare some nicely toasted bread and butter it.

Serve

  1. Place the buttered toast on a hot dish and pour the mixture over it.

  2. 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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Cream + breadtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled tongue
Provides the savory meat base and the main body of the mixture.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and a smooth, creamy texture to the mixture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture and add richness as gentle heat sets their proteins.
Buttered toasted bread
Forms the base, adding crisp texture and fat that soaks up the mixture.

The step that matters

Simmer over low heat. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with heat. Too much heat or too long makes them curdle and turn grainy, so keep the heat low and watch the mixture closely.

“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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