Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Tongue with Tomato Sauce

A boiled tongue served with a tomato sauce made from broth, flour, parsley, onion, carrot, salt, pepper, and tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Boiled Tongue with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tongue

  1. Half boil the tongue.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a pot, combine broth, flour, parsley, onion, carrot, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add the strained tomatoes and simmer to create a sauce.

  3. Lay the tongue on a dish and pour the sauce over it.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Main protein; boiling softens its connective tissue so the meat becomes tender.
Broth
Provides the liquid base and savoury flavour for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the tongue.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour and a mild sweetness as it cooks into the sauce.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Half boiling the tongue. Heat softens the collagen in the tongue, but overcooking dries and toughens the meat. Stopping at half-done keeps it tender and prevents stringy texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, parsley, carrot, pepper, tomato):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, parsley, carrot, pepper, tomato. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes