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A Plain or Pickled Tongue Forced

A tongue stuffed with a mixture of beef marrow, cream, egg yolks, bread crumbs, pepper, and Madeira wine, then roasted or boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Plain or Pickled Tongue Forced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Boil the tongue until half done.

  2. Peel the tongue and cut a piece from the center of the underside.

Make the stuffing

  1. In a mortar, combine beef marrow, cream, egg yolks, bread crumbs, pepper, and Madeira wine.

  2. Pound the mixture well together.

Stuff and cook

  1. Fill the cavity in the tongue with the mixture and sew it up.

  2. Cover the tongue with veal caul and roast or boil until tender.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  2. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cream + madeira winetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together146 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

Beef marrow
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing so it holds together when sliced.
Cream
Keeps the stuffing moist and soft rather than dry.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the stuffing body and structure.

The step that matters

Pound the mixture well together. Thorough pounding evenly blends the marrow, yolks, cream and crumbs, so the stuffing sets uniformly instead of forming pockets of unmixed fat or egg.

“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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