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To Stew Tongue

A dish of stewed beef tongue flavored with salt, saltpetre, gravy, soy sauce, mushroom ketchup, cayenne, cloves, and served with truffles, morels, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Stew Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Soak the tongue in salt and water, then clean it well.

  2. Lay the tongue in salt for 24 hours before pickling.

  3. Salt the tongue with saltpetre and common salt for a week, turning it daily.

  4. Boil the tongue until tender enough to peel.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the tongue in moderately strong gravy, seasoning with soy sauce, mushroom ketchup, cayenne, pounded cloves, and salt if needed.

  2. Serve with truffles, morels, and mushrooms.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Main protein that becomes tender and succulent after salting, boiling and stewing.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping it keep a firm texture and a pink colour during pickling.
Salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the tongue during the long salting and pickling.
Moderately strong gravy
Provides the liquid base that moistens the tongue during stewing.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury depth and umami to the stewing liquid.
Truffles
Contributes a strong earthy aroma to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Salting the tongue for a week. Saltpetre and salt must act evenly over the full week, so turning the tongue daily keeps the cure penetrating uniformly. Uneven curing leaves some areas under-seasoned or grey, and the meat's texture and colour depend on the cure reaching the centre.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, mushroom, ketchup, pepper, truffle):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, mushroom, ketchup, pepper, truffle. 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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