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Grilled Sheeps’ Tongues

Grilled sheep tongues coated in parsley, shallots, oil, and bread crumbs, served with a butter, egg yolk, and veal juice sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Grilled Sheeps’ Tongues

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongues

  1. Cut the sheep's tongues lengthwise.

  2. Mix parsley, shallots, oil, salt, and pepper in a bowl.

  3. Coat the tongues in the mixture, then roll them in bread crumbs.

Grill and make the sauce

  1. Preheat the grill and place the tongues on it.

  2. In a saucepan, melt butter, then add egg yolks, veal juice or lemon juice, broth, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Cook until thickened, then serve over the grilled tongues.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the butter sauce as they set with gentle heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that gives the sauce a smooth, silky texture.
Bread crumbs
Form a coating that helps the tongues brown and develop a crisp surface on the grill.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and yolk sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce until thickened. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently; too much heat scrambles them, leaving a grainy sauce instead of a smooth one.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, pepper, bread, butter, egg, veal, nutmeg):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, pepper, bread, butter, egg, veal, nutmeg. 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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