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Boiled Salt Tongue

A boiled salted tongue served with potatoes, cabbage, turnips, and carrots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Salt Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tongue overnight.

Cook

  1. In the morning, place the tongue in 6 quarts of cold water and boil slowly for 5 to 6 hours, depending on size.

  2. Remove the tongue from the boiling water and place it in cold water.

  3. Peel off the skin and set aside to cool.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Cabbage + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,505 recipes

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

  5. Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 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

Salt tongue
Is the main protein, seasoned by its curing salt and becoming tender through long, slow simmering.
Cold water
Covers the tongue for gentle, even simmering and later cools it so the skin can be peeled.

The step that matters

Boiling slowly for 5 to 6 hours. Gentle simmering tenderizes the tough muscle fibers and connective tissue evenly. A hard, rapid boil can toughen the outer meat and break the tongue apart.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, turnip, carrot):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, turnip, carrot. 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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