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Tongue Roasted

Roasted tongue served with gravy and garnished with cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Tongue Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the fresh tongue well and trim the roots to help it stand on the dish.

  2. Chop equal parts of onions and celery, and half as much of carrots and turnips.

  3. Pile the chopped vegetables along the tongue.

  4. Sprinkle the tongue and vegetables freely with coarse sea salt.

  5. Bind the tongue with the vegetables and fat in two or three folds of greased parchment paper.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the tongue, basting it well during cooking.

  2. Cut the string from the tongue.

  3. Remove the parchment paper.

  4. Brown the tongue.

  5. Serve the roasted tongue with gravy from roast beef or roast mutton.

  6. Garnish with cloves if desired.

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. Celery + carrottop 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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  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

Fresh tongue
Is the main cut that becomes tender and rich when slowly roasted.
Top fat or suet
Adds moisture and richness, basting the meat as it cooks.
Onions
Release moisture and sweetness as they roast, flavouring the tongue and drippings.
Celery
Contributes aromatic flavour to the vegetable bed around the tongue.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and caramelise in the pan.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and earthy aroma to the drippings and vegetable base.

The step that matters

Brown the tongue. Browning after the parchment is removed creates Maillard flavour and colour on the surface. Too little heat or moisture-rich wrapping leaves the outside pale and bland.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, turnip, 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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