Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Beef Tongue

A boiled beef tongue prepared with salt, pepper, and optional spiced brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Boiled Beef Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Wash the tongue and cover it with water in a pot.

  2. Add ½ cup salt and a small red pepper.

  3. Keep adding water to keep the tongue covered until it can be easily pierced with a fork.

  4. Remove the tongue.

  5. Peel it if serving soon; otherwise, leave the skin on until needed.

Spice and cure

  1. For spiced tongue, rub with a mixture of ½ pound brown sugar, saltpetre, and ground cloves.

  2. Place in a brine of ¾ pound salt and 2 quarts water for two weeks.

  3. Wash and dry the tongue.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover it with a thin paste of flour and water.

  2. Bake slowly, basting with lard and hot water until done.

  3. Scrape off the paste and skin before serving.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Is the main cut that becomes tender through long, slow cooking.
Salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out moisture and firm the surface during curing.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps flavor the spiced rub.
Lard
Adds fat for basting, helping the surface brown and stay moist during baking.

The step that matters

Keep the tongue fully covered while simmering. Water must cover the tongue the whole time, because exposed meat cooks unevenly and toughens. Cooking until a fork pierces it easily ensures the connective tissue has softened.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, pepper, sugar. 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

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes