Skip to main content
Main

To Boil a Pickled Tongue

A pickled tongue is boiled with onion, carrot, celery, and allspice until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Boil a Pickled Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tongue

  1. Wash the pickled tongue and place it in a saucepan.

  2. Cover the tongue with cold water.

  3. Add the chopped onion, carrot, celery, and allspice to the water.

  4. Boil for about 3 hours until tender.

  5. Check tenderness with a fork.

Finish

  1. Place the tongue in cold water.

  2. Remove the skin.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

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

  3. Celery + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,422 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 ingredient, becoming tender and flavourful as it simmers slowly in water.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the cooking liquid.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and body to the cooking liquid.
Celery
Adds fresh, savoury aroma to the cooking liquid.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Boil for about 3 hours until tender. Pickled tongue is a tough muscle that needs long, gentle simmering to break down its connective tissue. Testing with a fork shows when it is ready, since undercooking leaves it chewy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, allspice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, allspice. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes