Why it works: Beef and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,435 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
To Pickle or Salt Tongues
Ingredients
Directions
Cure
Cut off the root of the beef tongue, leaving some fat.
Cover the tongue with salt and let it sit in an earthenware dish for 24 hours.
Pour off the slimy matter and rub the tongue with a mixture of salt, sugar, and saltpetre.
Turn and rub the tongue daily for a week, renewing the mixture after that week.
Pickle and store
For pickling, dissolve 1 pound of salt, 1 pound of sugar, 3 ounces of saltpetre, and 3 ounces of salt prunella in 1 gallon of water.
Submerge the tongue in the brine, ensuring it is fully covered.
After two weeks, remove the tongue, rub it dry, and hang it up to keep or use it directly from the pickle.
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.
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Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,435 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Beef tongue
- Is the meat being cured, so it becomes firm, seasoned and preserved.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and seasons the meat while helping preserve it.
- Sugar
- Balances the saltiness and softens the savour of the cured meat.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives it the characteristic pink cured colour.
The step that matters
Pour off the slimy matter before the first rub. The slimy surface layer, drawn out by the initial salting, can carry spoilage bacteria and keep the cure from penetrating evenly. Removing it lets the salt, sugar and saltpetre mixture contact clean meat.
“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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