Name: Tongue, Curried
Ingredients: 1 tin of sheep’s tongues or the remains of an ox-tongue; ½ pint of curry sauce; well-boiled rice; lemon juice

Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Tongue, Curried

Ingredients

1 tin of sheep’s tongues or the remains of an ox-tongue
½ pint of curry sauce
well-boiled rice
lemon juice

Directions

Prepare the tongue

Remove the tongues from the tin and strip off the skin.
Slice the tongues thinly.

Make the curry

Prepare the curry sauce as directed and flavor it with lemon juice.
Add the sliced tongue to the sauce and let it absorb the flavors.

Serve

Serve the curried tongue with the boiled rice.

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.

Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,366 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Sauce + ricetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,396 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + lemontop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,598 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's tongues: Provide the meat that is sliced and simmered in the curry sauce.
Curry sauce: Carries the spice flavor and moisture that the sliced tongue absorbs.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the curry sauce.