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To Cure Tongues

A method for curing beef tongues with salt, sugar, saltpetre, pepper, and garlic, then smoking or drying before boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Cure Tongues

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the root from the tongue near the gullet, leaving the fat underneath.

  2. Soak the root in salt and water overnight, then clean it well.

  3. Sprinkle the tongue with salt and let it drain overnight.

Cure

  1. Mix the salt, sugar, saltpetre, pepper, and garlic in a bowl.

  2. Rub the mixture into the tongue daily for a week, adding more salt after a week.

  3. Label the date on parchment and tie it to the tongue for drying.

Smoke or dry and cook

  1. Smoke the tongue for 3 days or hang it in a dry place.

  2. Boil the tongue until tender, about 5 hours.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Neats' tongue
Is the meat being cured, and its fat layer stays on during preparation.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and helps preserve the meat during curing.
Coarse brown sugar
Balances the salt and adds a mild sweetness to the cured surface.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured tongue its characteristic colour.
Garlic or shallot
Adds aroma and savoury flavour to the cure.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture into the tongue daily for a week. Salt needs time and repeated contact to penetrate the meat evenly. Skipping days or uneven rubbing can leave parts under-cured and vulnerable to spoilage.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper. 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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