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To Boil Smoked Tongue

A boiled smoked tongue served cold or hot with sweet and sour sauce.

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 Boil Smoked Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the tongue and soak it in cold water overnight if it is dried out.

Cook

  1. Place the tongue in a kettle with the seasonings and cover with cold water.

  2. Simmer slowly for 2 to 4 hours until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from the brine, pull off the outer skin, cut off the root, and let cool in the brine.

  2. Slice and serve cold or hot with Sweet and Sour Sauce.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Smoked tongue
Is the main meat; long gentle simmering turns its tough muscle tender.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savour to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly. Gentle simmering lets collagen in the tough muscle break down into tender meat. A hard boil can toughen the outside and leave the centre firm, so keep the liquid barely bubbling.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove. 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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