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Stewed Lambs' Tongues

A stew of lamb tongues simmered with onion, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, stock, herbs, and celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Stewed Lambs' Tongues

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongues

  1. Boil the lamb tongues in clear water for 1½ hours.

  2. Transfer the tongues to cold water and remove the skins.

Make the stew base

  1. In a saucepan, combine the onion, carrot, turnip, and butter.

  2. Add the flour and stir until browned.

  3. Pour enough stock or water to cover the vegetables, then add seasonings.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb tongues
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender during long simmering.
Butter
Carries the vegetables' flavour and helps them brown in the pan.
Flour
Browns with the butter and thickens the stock into a richer sauce.
Onion
Builds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens and browns.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour until browned. Flour cooked in fat must brown evenly; if it scorches it turns bitter, and if it is left pale it will not add the nutty colour and flavour or thicken the stock well.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, pepper, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, pepper, celery. 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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